Tag: a little of this and a little of that

I am getting low on meat so I purchased ground round on sale for $4.79 a lb. for a total of $ 30.80 at Niagara Produce. This will give us about 11 meals. Hubby told me the night before that we needed celery because he used up the last of it in turkey salad. So I picked up one while I was there only to find out later that we had a new one already in the other produce drawer. So I cut up one package into pieces and froze it for soups and stews. I also needed two reusable bags at $ .99 each. They are so much bigger than the other bags. Mine seem to disappear when the family is here. I also stopped at Top’s and got a package of their on sale chicken breasts for $ 1.99 a lb.

Today I have a doctor’s appointment so I will stop at Top’s again because they are having a 3 Day Sale with some great loss leaders to get you into the store. I will be getting either a whole or half pork loin depending on what grade it is. They are on sale for $ 1.69 a lb. If it is Select, I will not buy it. If it is Choice, I will. They also have Heluva Good block cheeses for $ 1.99. I will be getting Extra Large Cooked Shrimp for $ 7.77 a lb. too. All of these are terrific prices for us. I will buy nothing but these loss leaders.

Now that all the turkey leftovers from my son are gone, I have been doing quick meals because we have been really busy in our basement going through every storage box and bin and reorganizing things. More on that later. We have had copycat Chick Fil A sandwiches, pizza, and tonight we will have taco salads to use up the rest of the romaine lettuce. Tomorrow night will be fish fries and French fries. Then I think I will make a beef stew in the crock pot for the weekend.

Hubby and I have been really busy in the house getting rid of anything that we are not using by donating it or tossing it. As I have mentioned briefly before, our garbage pickup rules are changing on January 1, 2024. Instead of being able to put out 6 bags or cans of garbage a week, we will have to use just the 1 that we have to buy from our garbage company for $ 65. That extra charge will appear on our property tax bill in January along with the the full year’s cost( about $ 260.) of the garbage pickup. It is the one on wheels that the truck picks up and dumps the garbage. I have to wonder how many garbage people are losing their jobs the end of December because of this. We have been using a recyclable one for a few years. Because of this we are trying to get rid of anything we aren’t using this month while we can still put out 6 cans or bags. Hubby went through the entire office and pitched so many things that were not being used. Now we are working in the basement.

In the spring, this is going to become a real problem because of grass and bush clippings. Hubby has 5-6 bags of clippings per week. This along with the garbage may not all fit in the new can. Hubby has had a conversation with our Town Supervisor about how we had the cans on wheels out in Arizona that were green barrels that you put the bush and tree trimmings out and they picked them up. He informed Hubby that the garbage company did not offer that but he will look into it. Meanwhile he told Hubby that we can buy an extra barrel for another $ 65. and for an additional property tax of $ 33.75 each year of the contract. We are happy that it is an option but we really won’t need it until he starts mowing in the spring. So since we can buy the extra at any time during the year, we will wait until then. In the meantime, we will get a feel for how much this new can will hold. Maybe it will work. We’ll see.

We also learned a valuable lesson this past week. Don’t ever buy from a third party seller at Walmart! We have had two items that we have had to return. The first was flannel sheets that were dirty. The package was taped up like it had been a return and then shipped to us. The second was Cross Pen Refills that we ordered from China. After a very long delay that package came yesterday. Not only was it not even close to what we ordered but our mailman brought it to our door telling us that they had paid some of the postage but there was $ 5.25 in postage due on it. Yikes this was for a $10.99 order that was supposed to be postage paid. Of course I had to pay the postage only to find out later when I opened it that it was not what we ordered. But the worst part of all of this is that when you bring your return back to Walmart, they tell you that they will return it to the seller and the seller will credit you. That will take 15 days or more. I asked if this is a new policy and she said yes. Walmart is no longer giving you the credit when you make the return. Well this stinks! I don’t have high hopes that the China one will be credited and I will just chalk up the postage to lesson learned. I will be very careful from now on to make sure that I am only buying from Walmart or Amazon and not a 3rd party seller.

Well, it is time to get started on my day with making bacon and eggs for breakfast. You all have a great day!

We had a wonderful day yesterday with Alexa. It was just a quiet peaceful day at home chatting with her and doing some You Tube Quizzes. Last night we had an easy dinner of fried chicken sandwiches and shells and cheese. Alexa got packed to go home today and then we watched women’s college volleyball.

This morning, we had a quick granola breakfast and then headed to Syracuse at 9am to meet Alexa’s mother. They left to go to the Capital Region and we headed back to Buffalo. We were running out of gasoline so we stopped at the Flying J truck stop and filled up the car. We paid $3.599 per gallon. That is the cheapest price in our area.

We were starving and I considered stopping for fast food for just 1 minute. But I held fast to cooking at home and made us grilled cheese sandwiches when we got home about 1:10pm.

After throwing a load of sheets in the washer, I was exhausted. We have been busy and on the go since November 9th. I decided to take a quick nap that turned into a 3 and 1/2 hour one.

When I got up, Hubby was about to finish his chicken salad that he made for lunch yesterday. I just grabbed a small chicken pot pie from the freezer.

After canceling two tests scheduled for this Wednesday because of snow coming , here I am writing to you. I will sleep well tonight hopefully. Tomorrow will be a a catch up and football day. Then I have a busy week getting ready for my son and his two large dogs to arrive for Thanksgiving.

The house will get dusted and vacuumed and be given a lick and a promise. Those dogs shed a lot so no heavy cleaning till after they go home.

I am hoping to get all of the Christmas gifts ready to go back with my son when he leaves so that I don’t have to ship anything.

I will be back with another post this week. I hope you are all doing well with your plans for Thanksgiving.

On Monday, my granddaughter and I went and picked up my free Butterball turkey. You could get a free one up to $25. But of course they did not have one that big. All of their turkeys were between 16 and 17 lbs. We got the largest one we could find which was 16.90 lbs. I was happy with that. It is now in the freezer to cook sometime this winter.

We also picked up a box of their pumpkin muffins which my granddaughter loves and some Indiana Popcorn with the chocolate drizzle(oh so good) that we shared for the Buffalo Bills game last night. I used some reward points that I had so I paid only $ 3.32 for all.

Then we went to the bank so that my granddaughter could make a deposit. It was the first time she did it alone and she did it without a hitch even after all of the questions they threw at her.

We came home and had a delicious bowl of chicken tortellini soup for lunch per her request. Then we spent the afternoon just enjoying her company. For dinner I made two meals worth of homemade meatballs. I froze one meal’s worth for the future. She loves spaghetti and meatballs so she was very happy!

Then we watched the Bills game which we lost in the last few seconds of the game due to a penalty. We had 12 men on the field instead of 11. Really, really dumb! Today the offensive coach got fired! He should have been let go a long time ago!

Today, Alexa helped me do some organizing in my pantry. There were heavy things that needed to be moved and she was happy to do it for me. She also marked many items with the expiration date where I could see it. All in all we spent about 2 hours doing this but now it is finally done. I am very thankful for her help.

As a treat for dinner, we got KFC chicken to bring home. I think we have enough for 2 more meals. I used a coupon that let us get a 16 piece meal for $ 34.99. Yes, I always spoil my grandchildren.

We have been enjoying ” Guess That Song” on You Tube for the past hour and a half. They are playing it while I finish this to get it posted. Hubby knows so many of them but Alexa knows so many more. She is even really good with the songs from the 1960’s and 1970’s!

That’s it for today!

We went to the Adirondacks on a 4 day trip to celebrate my eldest son’s 50th birthday. We returned yesterday afternoon and brought my granddaughter home with us so stay for the rest of the week.

When we traveled last week, there was barely any traffic on the Thruway which is unusual so it made the 5 hour trip very pleasant. Unfortunately most of the beautiful leaves were already down but there were some to admire.

Of course, we packed a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches and water in case we got hungry. Hubby ate very little breakfast and I ate none before we left. So we did ended up stopping at a rest area and ate it in the parking lot in the car.

I had gassed the car up before we left, so we did not have to do it on the thruway. Usually the prices are about the same on this toll road but I didn’t see that this weekend. They were much higher than we pay. It was the same way on the trip back. So I will fill up at our cash station before my granddaughter and I run some necessary errands in the next town today.

Our planned celebration for my son did not go the way it should have so I was so sorry for him. We had planned on taking the 4 of us and 3 of his best friends to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. We were concerned because there were seven of us and it was a Friday night, that it would be a nightmare of a long wait to get a table. However, they sat us relatively quickly. One of his friends didn’t make it which was unfortunate. But she is a paramedic and got stuck at work.

To try to keep this as short as possible, I will tell you that when our dinner was served my son’s dinner was not what he ordered. His steak was supposed to have sauteed onions on it. It came out with mushrooms on it which he hates. They took it back and said a new one would be right up. I felt bad because it was his birthday and we all had our food but he didn’t. When they brought a new one, it had mushrooms on it again. We sent it back. When he got it back it had most of the mushrooms gone but there were still some. My son decided to not make any more fuss and just eat around them. We are pretty sure that all they did was scrape all of the mushrooms off but they missed some plus at this point the steak was cold. When a manager came over to see how our dinner was, my husband who rarely gets upset told him it was a disaster. The manager was very condescending. My husband asked for the head of the restaurant. After they sent another manager( who I think are a dime a dozen), they finally sent the head. At this point hardly anyone was eating. My son’s dinner was less than half gone. My granddaughter was upset and ate very little of hers. The rest of us left quite a bit on our plates. None of our family were the least bit interested in eating.

The manager came finally and ended up taking my son’s and granddaughter’s meals and drinks off of the bill. That in no way compensated for the way this evening had gone which should have been fun. I felt so bad for my son and my granddaughter. We had the best of intentions and the restaurant ruined it. So I paid the $177.+ bill for 4 of us and we left. The friends left and the 4 of us went back to the house to have his ice cream birthday cake. We had a good time at home watching Private Ryan. I should have cooked a fabulous meal at his home and everyone would have been happy!

I will be writing Corporate to let them know about this disaster and that we will never step foot in one of their restaurants again. They, I am sure will not care but it will make me feel better. The service was terrible and the food was mediocre at best. You have all heard me say that we don’t like chain restaurants. However, we went there the last time we visited my son and we all loved it. That is why I chose them. My son and his business partner eat there a lot and I don’t think they have had a prior problem. But they will not eat there again after this either. I am totally done with any chain restaurants.

We had a wonderful time with our family while we were there otherwise. It is so peaceful, beautiful, and quiet where my son lives. When he and I quickly took a trip to Stewart’s for hamburger buns, he took me to a relatively new built area that is very close to his home. I was showing him which homes we would consider buying if they went up for sale. He has been looking for us for a while but nothing has popped up that we would like. Fingers crossed!

I have some good news for you too! My granddaughter who is 16 has graduated from high school. We are so very proud of her! She will be starting her new office job soon while she figures out what she wants to do with the rest of her life, whether she wants to go to college or work. She is young and will take her time trying to make the right choice. Most 17 and 18 year old graduates don’t know what they want to do.

When we got home yesterday afternoon, I quickly made us all grilled cheese sandwiches. Then Alexa was interested in me making homemade chicken tortellini soup for dinner. So I grabbed 3 pint jars of chicken stock and a quart of homemade chicken stock that I had pressure canned, added fresh celery and carrots, the tortellini and seasoned all. She loved it so much that she wants it for dinner again tonight. That will be easy after our day out! This evening we will watch the Buffalo Bills game.

We will be enjoying our granddaughter this week so I may not be blogging much. But if I have time in the morning when she is sleeping in, I will jump on. I hear her getting up now, so I need to get ready for our day out.

You guys have a wonderful week!

It has been crazy around here but I finally found time to go get this deal at Top’s. I got 17.57 lbs. of chicken breasts for $ 34.96. That was $ 1.99 a lb. and there was a limit of 3 packages. I haven’t seen that price around here in a couple of years. They had plenty so if I have to go anywhere else this week, I will stop and get 3 more.

This week our sprinkler company came and blew out the lines for the winter. Our heating people just came to service the furnace for the winter to make sure that everything is working well. Hubby is keeping him busy while I blog.

In the meantime, I have been organizing pantries. I started cleaning out my chest freezer and then realized that those bins wouldn’t fit because there was too much meat in the freezer. So we are eating out of it every night so that we can get it down to where the bins will work.

Also I canned up a whole bunch of chicken from the freezer the end of last week and put it on the shelf. The chicken I got today I will cut up tonight and can it in the morning.

In case you guys haven’t gotten the word, now there is a shortage of resin. It is used in making Ziploc bags and other food grade bags. So if you are in need, I would grab some now before they disappear and the price skyrockets. This info came from within the largest manufacturing plant of those bags in the U.S. Notice how the media isn’t even mentioning it.

Hubby has been moving our underground sprinkler system in the new garden in the backyard. I helped where I could. The hosing was right where we are having the landscape company move two rose of sharon bushes. They have gotten too big for the gardens they are in. We didn’t want to have a repeat of when the first garden was put in. They cut the sprinkler hose. Now these are safe and out of the way.

Tonight we are having leftover fish that we cooked up last night. Hubby had breaded haddock and I had salmon. We will reheat the leftovers in the air fryer.

Did you get a any good deals this week?

Three of my six bins for the freezer arrived yesterday. They say the rest are arriving today.

This is only part of what I canned on Monday. I cooked up the large pack of ground beef and was able to fill 11 jars. Then I cut up the top round roast and was able to fill 3 more jars. Since my canner does 7 pints at a time, this gave me two full loads. They both process at 75 minutes so it was perfect. I had never done stew beef before so I thought I had filled up the jars but after processing, there was room left in them. So next time, I know to fill them with more meat. I have already put away the other 6 jars but I need to put these in the basement. I am running out of room upstairs.

Yesterday morning, I went up to Home Depot to get 5 more bags of lawn soil. Hubby has been filling in around the edges of the new driveway that was put in last fall with the soil and planting grass. He had already purchased 10 bags but it wasn’t enough. Those bags are heavy. I was lucky to find a young employee who did all the lifting, rung me up, and put them in the car. Hubby finished it yesterday and he had just put the last bit of seed down, when it rained. So we didn’t have to water. That made me happy since we just paid our 3 month $200. water bill.

After bringing the soil home and Hubby unloaded it, I went back to Walmart. I had not been in a Walmart in a long time. I always get delivery. But I am running out of some of the sizes of my canning jars and their site showed they had them. They had not one. But I needed other things that were on my winter list so I did a bit of shopping. I was shocked to see how barely stocked the shelves were. I have never seen a store this low on stock. That Panama Canal slowdown of the ships is really hurting the store inventories. If you need things for the winter, I would suggest getting them sooner rather than later. I don’t know how long supplies will last.

Fortunately, our 240 pounds of water softener salt arrived. We also have enough furnace filters and humidifier pads to get us through the winter. If you are stocking for the winter, they are just a couple of things that you should look at.

I picked up some OTC necessary medicines that we needed, some warm clothing, a bit of food, and warm socks. $178. later I walked out of the store with just 4 bags. Things are getting more expensive. I won’t bore you with the list of items. When I got home, I ordered many cases of pint jars which they are shipping from the warehouse. I don’t want to be short of them while I am doing the freezer.

Hubby and I went through our home over the weekend and made a list of all of the items that we believe will not last us the winter. When I talk about winter, I mean 6 months. We get a lot of snow and cold here and the forecast for the winter here is not good. It looks like it will arrive early and last later than normal. Lots of snow and below average temperatures are coming. I told him that I am not going out of the house this winter to run errands or for anything else. I have actually rescheduled all of my appointments until late spring. When we need fresh produce, dairy or anything else, we have Walmart Delivery and Instacart. So we can get delivery of almost everything. Our drug store will deliver our prescriptions.

Later in the day, a man from the Tree Service we called came to look at our pear tree and our other trees. The pear tree is loosing it’s leaves early and didn’t look good. The man told Hubby it probably was related to the weather this year. No fungus found. He told Hubby to get some Neem (which we already have) and just spray it in the early spring. He says it will come back and be just fine. He is coming back to trim our birch tree and maple tree. He said our cherry tree is just perfect. Our purple plum is on it’s way out. But he said they only last about 15 years anyhow. It is almost 14 years old now. So we will have to think about what we are going to replace it with.

For dinner last night, Hubby grilled the chicken that I purchased last weekend. He used my homemade BBQ sauce. It was so delicious. It is a recipe that carried down over the years from our ancestors. He grilled 4 breasts so there are two left for dinner tonight.

Since our dinner is ready for tonight and I quickly picked up the house, threw a load of laundry in, did the dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms this morning, I can start working on pulling food out of the freezers that I want to can. When it thaws, I will start the canner. Then I can defrost the chest freezer and organize it. This will definitely take me a few days.

Are you stocking up on necessities for the winter?

I am happy to be back blogging. It has been a hectic 5 weeks. I needed the time off to can a lot of meat among other things. My latest was 7 pounds of ground beef. I have many more stored away besides these. Each pint jar will give us 2 meals each.

Hubby helped me to can the peaches. I purchased a 1/2 bushel at Niagara Produce that were ready to be canned. I already had all the canning supplies which I purchased last year. Walmart has the best price on good canned peaches. They are $ 2.44 each. I got my peaches at under $ 1.54 for each jar. Yes, a bit of time was needed to do it. But I actually love canning and so does Hubby. We had a little bit left over that we had cut up and they were so delicious. I ended up with a total of 20 jars. Plus I made 6 jars of freezer jam. I think Hubby has eaten a bit of one of the jams already on bagels.

I also got the ground beef at $ 2.99 a pound. I made a big meatloaf that Hubby and I had for 3 dinners and canned the rest of it. A can of purchased Keystone Ground Beef is going for $ 5.04 a pound. Canning it saves me a lot of money.

My freezers are slowly going down. I have not been doing a lot of shopping the past 5 weeks. Plus I am canning all of the chicken and ground beef in my freezers that I am able to. They are predicting a very cold and snowy winter for us. I do not want a lot of food in my freezers in case we have a power outage.

We had an outage last week but fortunately it only lasted a couple of hours. When the power came back on, we had a communication failure with our alarm system. I was concerned that the system was blown. But after calling our alarm company, they said it was working on their end so we were protected. They gave Hubby directions to clear the panels and waited on the phone till everything was cleared. It is working fine on both their end and ours now.

Right now, I am roasting 2 large roasting chickens in my big turkey roasting pan. They should be done in about 25 minutes. Top’s has rotisserie chickens on sale this week for $ 7.49. But my 2 roasting chickens were purchased at Walmart in the Perdue Twin Pack for $ 1.14 a pound. I got some a few weeks ago and I was surprised that they are still at that price. I paid $ 12.87 this morning for these and they are much bigger than the ones that are already cooked at Top’s. We will have one for dinner tonight and tomorrow night. Then I will take the rest of the meat off that one and the other one and freeze it for many meals. The carcasses will go in the crockpot overnight to make bone broth. That I will can. This saves me from having to buy broth at the store and mine turns out thicker and tastier.

Because food prices are rising so quickly and I believe that the prices will keep going up into 2024, Hubby and I have put a new plan and budget in place for groceries. More about that in another post.

We also had so many doctor appointments and tests that needed to be done this past month. I needed to concentrate on those.

Then the last half of the month, West came to spend a weekend with us.

We also had family on my Hubby’s side come and visit us from Houston,Texas for 5 days. So as you can see we had a very busy last month.

I am actually glad that company is gone and I can get back to what needs to be done around here.

I really hope you are all well and had a wonderful August and Labor Day weekend. I missed you all.

Hubby and I planted our geraniums this morning. They look nice on the patio. We went out at 6 am this morning to do it while it was still 68 degrees outside instead of the 90 that they predicted for later. The air quality today was terrible. I did some weeding on the patio since we were out there. Those pesky things like to grow between the pavers.

We ran out of ink for our ink jet printer. We have a black laser printer that we use for most things. However the ink jet which prints in color, Hubby uses once in a while. So the best deals for us that I found were at Amazon and Walmart. I needed a 6 pack of assorted colors. We use the remanufactured ones instead of the name brand. They are much cheaper and work just as well as the name brand that we would purchase.

At Amazon, they were $ 24.99 minus a 15% off coupon plus I would get 9% back from Rakuten which would bring the cost down to $19.34. I do have $6.00 in gift cards to help pay for them. If I use those gift cards, my OOP would be $13.34. I also had to buy a $.99 item, that we use all of the time, to get the free shipping.

At Walmart, the same 6 pack would be $21.39 minus 3% back from Rakuten for a total of $ 20.65. I do have a $25.00 gift card so my OOP would be $.00.

But I ordered them at Amazon since the cost was cheaper. I will save my Walmart gift cards for a delivery order.

Today was a cleaning day so one room got done, dishes were kept cleaned up and I did a load of wash in cold water. Most of it was hung to dry. I like to dry my towels in the dryer. As usual, lights were kept off during daylight hours.

We made hamburgers for dinner tonight. I cut up some fresh mushrooms and sauteed them and topped it all with swiss cheese for mine and Hubby sauteed some vidalia onion for his. I love a good mushroom swissburger! We had strawberries and whipped cream on the dessert cakes.

I hope you all had a great day!