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Every Day

What We Ate and Grocery Shopping

I only grocery shopped once this week. That shop is pictured above. I purchased three dozen eggs at $ .89 each, vidalia onions at $.69 a lb., 2 jars of olives, some shaved Parmesan cheese, and 5 packages of turkey pepperoni. I spent $ 20.86.

We go through eggs like crazy. They get used mostly for breakfasts but I do hard boil some for snacks and to put on salads. The pepperoni is for snacking. Hubby has decided he no longer likes Parmesan cheese in a shaker like Kraft makes. So he is trying this shaved Parmesan. I wanted a block to grate myself but my store had none. The onions and olives were needed since we are almost out. I don’t like green olives but Hubby loves them.

Now for what we ate this week.  Almost every breakfast was either eggs with Canadian bacon or turkey bacon. I added a 1/2 of avocado to most breakfasts. Sunday’s family breakfast, I cooked turkey bacon for me and regular bacon for Hubby, my son and West. I also served the Cranberry orange bread that I made for the boys. I make eggs over easy or scrambled depending on who wants what. 

I made mashed cauliflower and shaved beef for a couple of lunches this past week. I am trying to use up an old package of Steak Umms that was in the freezer. Other lunches were salads with lots of veggies and sometimes a sliced hard boiled egg on top. I only use a little olive oil or lemon juice on my salads. Hubby usually make himself a sandwich -cold cuts, egg salad or tuna.

Dinners were simple. When I am dieting, I find that simple is better. So we eat a lot of the same meals a few days in a row. I made a huge crock pot full of homemade spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage. We ate that 3 nights in a row. Half of the sauce I froze for future meals. Hubby has his on spaghetti with some Italian sausage and I have mine on zucchini noodles with no sausage.

One night, Hubby made Chef’s salads and two nights we had salads without meat or cheese. The last night of the week, Hubby grilled NY Strip steaks outside. I sauteed some crimini mushrooms to go on top. We had eaten large salads for lunch that day so the steak was all we ate for dinner. 

We are getting plenty of salads and veggies every week so I didn’t mind going without a very large meal on steak night. Many snacks are things like celery stuffed with soft cheese, turkey pepperoni, pepper strips, sliced cucumbers, etc. so I know that I am getting enough veggies each week.

We had such a busy week that I was not able nor did I remember to take a lot of pictures. I promise more next week since we have a very easy week for the first time in a very long time.   

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Every Day

It Feels Like The Arctic Here

We got buried with about a foot of snow overnight on Tuesday evening. The lake effect snow is very active this winter lately. The windchill was below zero when Hubby went out to snow blow yesterday morning. 

He would normally have just waited until the frigid temperatures went up. But we had the microwave installers coming. I had no idea if they would even show because there were travel bans everywhere. But just in case he got it done before it got even colder.

You can see how much snow we have by seeing how high up it is on our mailbox post. The plow hadn’t been through except once early in the morning at that point. But of course when Hubby went out to do the snow blowing, the plow came through and he ended up with about a 2 foot tall wall of snow at the end of the driveway. The plow always puts 75% of the snow from the road on our side of the road.

I was up until the wee hours of the morning last night. When I went to bed at 1:30am, the wind chill was -28 and was supposed to drop to -34 later. It is darn cold here today. We have not left the house. The blowing snow makes the visibility terrible. 

The good news is that the installer showed up with my new microwave. I never realized how much I missed one. When they left, the first thing I made was popcorn. It was so good. Then it was really nice to heat up leftovers for dinner.

It’s a Maytag and I love it. It is super quiet like my Bosch dishwasher. You can barely hear either appliance in my kitchen which is a good thing since we have an open concept home. 

My favorite part is the fact that the entire inside is stainless steel. It also has a large rectangular tray instead of the round one so that I can fit larger Pyrex type dishes in it. The large tray oscillates from side to side while the food is cooking. 

Since we are stuck at home, I have been taking advantage of that time to work on the income taxes. I also had a huge list of odds and ends to get done like phone calls and paper work. Yes I can procrastinate on things I don’t really want to do. But they had to get done today. 

I also have done some cleaning and organizing. But most of the time, we are watching movies and staying warm.

Since it is so cold today, it seemed like a good comfort food day. So I roasted a turkey in the oven. We had mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, corn and gravy with it. Yup, mostly carbs. I am eating a lot of the things that I love that I can’t have after my surgery. 

Tomorrow or Saturday, I will update you on how I did on my goals this month. So get ready to let us all know how you did on yours in January by leaving a comment on that post.            

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Every Day

Waste Not, Want Not

We are using up the leftovers from Thanksgiving. Every dab of everything will get used. I have never understood why people don’t use leftovers. I have known so many of them who just throw them out. They might as well just burn their money and not waste their time cooking them. Remember every penny always counts. They all add up!


This morning, Hubby made potato pancakes from all of the mashed potatoes we had. He put cheddar cheese in them and I have to tell you they were delicious. I love them with a dab of sour cream and Hubby loves ketchup.

We have leftover cranberry sauce. It will be used with Little Smokies and some chili sauce for dinner tomorrow night. Any leftovers will be lunch on Tuesday.

There is a little sausage stuffing smothered in gravy which will be lunch for us tomorrow. 

And today I made homemade turkey and rice soup for dinner. All the leftover turkey went in it. When I cut up celery for the stuffing. I diced enough for the soup too. I also sliced up carrots and used the leftover corn from Thanksgiving. The last of the gravy was thrown in along with the broth. Leftovers will be frozen for future soup meals.

Get creative with your leftovers and save those dollars! They will increase your net worth a lot during a year’s time.  

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Every Day

A Little of This and a LIttle of That

I decided to do some baking for Thanksgiving today.
I baked two loaves of pumpkin bread and two loaves of banana bread. They are all from scratch.  After they cooled, I double wrapped them in aluminum foil and froze them. They will be part of our breakfasts while my family is here for the Thanksgiving holiday. So I will pull them from the freezer the night before I need them. 

So what do you do for dinner when you have been baking?  I was tired but didn’t want to spend the money to go out. So I grabbed some cooked chicken that I put in the freezer from the 2nd roasting chicken that I cooked  a bit ago. I diced it and added it to a Zatarain’s Red Beans and Rice mix that was in my basement stockpile. Hubby tossed a bagged coleslaw mix with diced apples, raisins and walnut pieces and added his own sauce. It was about 5 -10 minutes hands on time and it was delicious.


I wrote our two couples who I have been helping this past week because I hadn’t heard from them. They are both busy especially because they will be traveling for Thanksgiving. So they are going to write to me after they get back. When they update me, I will update you. 


I am happy that I have all of my Christmas shopping done and wrapped. I am almost ready for Thanksgiving. I just have some pies to make and bake either Tuesday or Wednesday. Tom turkey has been defrosting in the refrigerator since this morning. This is one of my favorite holidays especially when family is coming to visit. I miss my granddaughter so much and can’t wait to see her!

While I have been shopping, wrapping and baking for the holidays, we have been thinking about our goals for 2019.  We have been brainstorming for months. There are a lot of small things that we want to do to let us save some serious money next year. Have you thought about your goals for the New Year? It’s not too early to do so.

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Every Day

Lest You Think That I Don’t Spend Any Money….

I did one of the largest shopping trips this morning that I have done in probably a year. This trip was to pick up the rest of the things that I needed for our Thanksgiving meal and other foods for our winter stockpile.

The coupons that Top’s mailed me that I discussed in a prior post arrived yesterday. They are four weeks worth of coupons. This week’s was my free turkey coupon and a $3.00 off produce coupon. The turkey coupon was good for a 10lb. and up with a $50. purchase. I knew that I was going to be spending a lot more than $50. today. Above is the free turkey which will be used for a family dinner next spring. The ice cream is for Thanksgiving dessert and the potatoes were needed to make our mashed potatoes.

As you can see above my free Jennie O turkey was 19.57 lb. It would have cost me on sale $ .48 a lb. or a total of $ 9.39. Free is so much better!

The gallon of milk was free because I purchased 3 Pillsbury Pie Crusts and 1 Pillsbury cookie dough. It was a Top’s store deal. One of the boxes of crusts will be used for the homemade cherry pie for Thanksgiving. The cherries were picked from our tree in June and frozen. I also purchased a pumpkin and an apple pie. I am short on time next week because we have appointments on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I like Mrs. Smith’s pies so they will suffice. I will make the cherry pie on Tuesday evening. I picked up the limit of 4 butter at Aldi’s for $1.99 a lb. and 1 lb. at Tops with a Super Coupon. I need to get more at Aldi’s every time I go by one. I plan on stockpiling 20- 25 lbs. for this next year. The sausage is for the stuffing next week. Eggs are always stockpiled here when we have company. Hubby wanted some deli ham for lunches this week. I usually buy my 1/2 and 1/2 at Walmart but they have had none the last 2 times I have been in that store. Hopefully this will last us through Thanksgiving.

The bananas were free with the $3.00 produce coupon. Celery was needed for stuffing. The jellied cranberry sauce, yams, and some of the broth will be used for our Thanksgiving meal. The Ritz were needed for the stockpile as was the canned apple pie fillings. The Chex mix is for snacking while company is here. The candy is a gift. The 6 cans of Deluxe mixed nuts are to make two large batches of our party mix. One for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas. Hubby HATES mixed nuts that have peanuts in them. So once a year I splurge on over $40.00 worth of the deluxe nuts for the holiday party mixes. The Fit and Active whipped topping are for  the pies.

The 2 boxes of Rice Chex, 2 Cheerios, and the 2 bags of pretzel sticks are for the party mix. The bread is for French toast when we have company.

Lastly, Hubby’s Diet Coke was on sale for B2G2F. So to keep him stocked, I picked those up.

I spent $ 142.36 at Top’s and $ 22.47 at Aldi’s. I desperately need Wheat Chex. Neither store had any. We can’t make the party mix without it. So as soon as I finish this post I am headed out to go to a few more stores to try to find two boxes. I may have to travel to another town but I am not coming home without it. I also need to go to the liquor store for some bottles of wine. Once this is done, I am hoping with the exception of butter and some hams to not need anything else for a long time.

Have you guys finished your shopping yet for your Thanksgiving meals?     

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Every Day

Hubby’s Homemade Dinnner

After all the years I have cooked, I love it when Hubby decides he is going to cook a meal. He loves making me breakfast and once in a while he makes dinner. Last night was one of those nights. He asked me to look at his recipes the day before and make sure we had everything he needed. We needed bread flour because I was low. So I picked up 5 pounds on the way home from the dentist yesterday.

He made homemade tomato soup which he has been making for years. It is so good and so much better than tomato soup in a can. The pic above shows when it just started to cook. He simmered it for a while and just before we ate, he added leftover elbow macaroni from a prior meal this week. It was so delicious. After dinner, he bagged some up and froze it for future meals. The rest will be our lunches for the next couple of days.

Here is the soup after it cooked and the macaroni was added. The only changes that Hubby makes to the recipe is to add Italian seasoning spice and leave out the leeks which he does not like. 

Hubby decided that he would make homemade Ciabatta Bread to go with it. He made it by hand. He made two separate loaves on two different sheet pans. Here is one of them while it was rising. The recipe told him to lightly flour them. He did but we couldn’t figure out why. All it did was make the loaf a little flour-y. But it easily wiped off so that we could eat it. Perhaps you experienced bread makers can tell us why it said to do that.

Here is one of the loaves after it was baked and cooling. He just wiped off the flour on the outside before we ate it. He also added some rosemary to the top of the loaf before he baked it. This recipe is definitely a keeper. We loved this as you can see with our soup. 

The bread was still warm and with butter it was scrumptious. It was a very enjoyable meal made for under $1.00 per serving. We will definitely be making this once a month all winter.

Hubby was thrilled with the way his bread turned out. We ate about half a loaf so we have a loaf and a half left. I save my bread bags and twist ties for when I make bread in my bread maker. At first I thought we would freeze one loaf but on second thought I was sure that we eat it this weekend. I bet it will make great toast for our family breakfast on Sunday. 

Here is the recipe for the Ciabatta Bread . And here is the recipe for the Tomato Soup

I had so many doctor and dentist appointments this week that I have only had time to post twice. So I will be doing our frugal things list that I haven’t done in a while tomorrow.

Do any of you have great homemade bread recipes that you use? Would you share them with Hubby?

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Every Day

Our Frugal Saturday

We have been extremely busy today. Hubby hired a company to fix our stone front on the house. Three of the ledge stones had fallen off. They wanted $800. to do the job. We said okay. That was back in May. They said they would do it when they got time. They have never come or called us. With winter upon us, Hubby decided to fix it himself. He did a lot of research this week to learn how to do it. This afternoon he has been working on it. He is an engineer so he built a contraption to hold the stones against the house while they dry in place. It is ingenious and seems to be working well.

This morning I cut up all of the leftover lasagna from Hubby’s birthday dinner. I used the food saver to package in up in 2 portion meals and put them in the freezer for future dinners. Two nights in a row was enough. It’s very rich. 

Then I made my next two weeks of menu plans. I like having to do this every two weeks instead of one. Sorry about the shadows on the first week.

Next I made my prep tray for dinner tonight. I do this every morning for meals that need prepping. That way when it is time to cook all I have to do is pull the tray out of the fridge. We are having chicken stir fry with onions, red, orange, and yellow peppers, and pineapple chunks. We will use a little of the stir fry sauce. Hubby will make rice to put on it in the rice cooker.  


After that I made a little homemade blueberry and banana ice cream and it is freezing in the freezer as I write this.


Then it was time to bring all of the items for our next two weeks of dinner meals up from the chest freezer. They all reside now in the first drawer of my fridge freezer. I also keep my yeast here for making bread.


On the left side of that drawer, I keep our breakfast items like chopped onions for our omelets and hash browns, sausage, bacon, orange juice to make cranberry orange muffins, and blueberries for muffins, smoothies, and pancakes. I also have two toaster waffles left from when my granddaughter was here. West will eat them next time he is here to visit for a weekend. 

Now I am about to go watch football with Hubby before I make dinner. 

How is your Saturday going? 


 

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Every Day

Meal Planning

I never meal planned. I would just look in the pantry or freezer and determine what meat I would cook that night and add sides to it.

But in the past 30 years, I have come to enjoy meal planning. I do it on Saturday night for the following week. Before I even think about a meal, I check my calendar to see what appointments we have for the week and when. Then I plan my meals around those things. For example, I had a long dentist appointment yesterday and a long day out of the house so we went out to dinner. We hadn’t been out in well over a month so it was a treat. When I had kids at home, we planned meals around their activities. They played sports in junior high and high school so my crock pot got used a lot.


On Saturday night, I ask Hubby if there is anything special that he would like to eat this coming week. Sometimes, he will make a suggestion and sometimes he won’t.

Then I come up with 6-7 meals for dinners that I will make during the week. Each week I try to have at least one meatless meal. Because I knew we were going out to dinner last night, I penciled that in for Tuesday night. Next I checked my pantries, refrigerator, and freezers to see if I had the ingredients for those meals. I had all the ingredients this week so I needed no food at the grocery store to make them. If I did need an ingredient, I would put it on my grocery list. However I did shop for a few things this week. I purchased the liquid dish detergent pictured above at Walmart for $ 5.96(stockpiling for the winter). It is the cheapest dish detergent that we like. So I just buy it and pour it into a smaller bottle.  I also went to Dollar Tree and picked up 6 packages of Jennifer’s Garden Spring Rolls for a $1.00 each. We rarely buy food at Dollar Tree but when I find something we really like, I stock on it. When I saw these a while ago, I purchased one package to try. They are vegetable spring rolls. I deep fry them or air fry them.  They are delicious! My store doesn’t always have them so when I see them I snag a bunch. They will make a nice snack on Sundays during football season. I also picked up 2 lbs. of butter for $ 2.36 each at Aldi’s.

Here is our menu this week:


Sunday – Homemade chicken vegetable soup, crackers with butter
Monday – A repeat of Sunday night
Tuesday – Dinner out
Wednesday – Chicken with Orange Sauce on rice, green beans
Thursday – Hubby’s meat chili on rice, tomatoes, and cucumbers
Friday – A repeat of Thursday night
Saturday – Meatless spaghetti, side salad


I find that meal planning saves us money because our leftovers get eaten and I can work food that needs(think produce) to be used into our meals. We have very little waste in this house.

We always have many choices of breakfast food in the house – cold and hot cereal, eggs, bacon, sausage, ham slices and I make pancakes, waffles, various muffins and quick breads. This week I have been eating a bowl of plain yogurt, fresh blueberries, and granola sprinkled on top for breakfast every day. It’s easy to grab what we feel like eating when we get up.  Lunches are usually sandwiches, peanut butter on English muffins, salads, fruit, cheese and crackers or leftovers. Sometimes we even skip lunch if we know that we are having a heavier meal like stew for dinner.


So if you haven’t tried to meal plan at least your dinners, give it a try. It only takes a few minutes to do. We save money not running for takeout or going out to dinner two or three nights a week because I forgot to thaw something or I don’t know what to make. I keep my menu on the side of the fridge so we always know what we are having that day.

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Every Day

Cutting The Grocery Bill

The most expensive grocery item that I buy is meat. Hence when I want to cut back on this bill, I look for great sales. One of those “WOW” sales was in my Sunday flyer this week. It also said that the quantity was limited and the sale started on Wednesday.

Since sales like this don’t last long in my markets, I made sure that I was at the store when it opened at 9AM. Many times I have missed out because the sale item is gone the first hour. There were about 12 people waiting in a line outside the store for it to open.  I hightailed it to where I knew the chickens would be. 

These were roasting chickens that were on sale at Aldi’s for $ .79 a lb. I got 6 of them for roasting in the autumn months. They should last us until turkeys go on sale in November.

I had 20 lbs. of chicken that I purchased early spring but it is now all gone. So I was waiting for a good price to stock up. I love the smell of chickens roasting in the oven. Since my oven is a convection oven they don’t take as long to roast as a regular gas oven.  So that saves me about 25% of the energy.

Plus there are only two of us and I can get 5 meals out of each of them especially if I make chicken rice soup.  We usually have a roast chicken dinner for the first meal. Then some kind of chicken casserole that will last us two days. Then if I make soup, we have that two nights and sometimes we have leftovers for lunch. That is why they call them “rubber chickens” because they stretch.   


I will be mentoring two people who have asked me to starting in September not individually but by blogging. Today’s advice is just a little sample. That way everyone can benefit from my advice. And since I don’t put ads up the advice is free of charge. Use what you can and pass over what you can’t.


One of the things I want to do is teach these people how to shop on the cheap by cooking from scratch. The main component of this is buying when things are at rock bottom prices. If you track when prices are at their lowest during the year, you will know what time of year to buy any item. Turkeys will hopefully be under a $1.00 per lb. this Thanksgiving season. These past two weeks I have seen my lowest prices on pork chops at $ 1.49 so I purchased 10 lbs.


This chicken has never been this low at $ .79 a lb. in my area. So if you need chicken and have an Aldi’s, stock up. You can do what I do by roasting it and making a # of meals. Or you can cut the roaster up into parts – breasts, legs, thighs, wings, and use the back meat and little bits left on the bone for soup. This is a whole lot cheaper than spending $1.99 a lb. for chicken breasts when they are on sale. 

BTW, my Top’s and my Dollar General already have their Halloween decorations and candy out and we are only half way through August. I find it kind of ridiculous! This and Christmas decorating get earlier every year. I am planning on staying out of the stores as much as possible. So I will just ignore all of it.

Tonight we are going to try the jarred Tikka Masala, with chicken and peppers, that I purchased to see if we even like it. It we do, I will make it from scratch and put it in our menu rotation. I will let you know what we think.

Till I post again, have a wonderful end of August!  
  

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Every Day

So Many Things Going On

It’s been a busy week and it seems to be getting busier. Yesterday, I went and picked up my Zaycon Fresh chicken order. I was so impressed at how organized they were.

I went down about 1/2 hour early because my pickup was at 5:00PM which is the middle of rush hour here and it was a 40 mile+ round trip. Before I left I set up the food saver and bags, cutting board, and all the bowls that we would need.

When I got there, I found that they were all set up early. I pulled up to the tractor trailer truck and gave a man my name. They put the 40 lbs. of chicken in my trunk and I was on my way home. I had put a large blanket on the carpet in my trunk in case anything leaked but it wasn’t necessary. The chicken was packed in a heavy duty cardboard box and inside was a huge heavy plastic bag. Inside that were 4 bags each with 10 lbs. of chicken. I kept this box because it has a nice cover, was very clean inside, and will work perfectly for storage in our basement. 

On the way home, I stopped and picked up Subway subs so that we could eat sometime before or after we got all of the chicken prepared. Being it was dinnertime, we were hungry.

Hubby put all of the chicken on a tray in the refrigerator and then we ate. Then I started draining a bag of chicken. It was my job to trim the chicken and then Hubby food savered it all. It only took us about an hour and a half to get it all done and in the freezer. Lastly, I sanitized the kitchen and all of the utensils we used. 


As you can see in the picture at the beginning of this post, it fit beautifully in the freezer with lots of room leftover. This morning I will get it into a larger bag so that I can easily find it when I need it. We need to use up the 14 lbs. that we already had first though.

I have to thank my DIL for helping me out by telling me how my son did up all of their chicken last week. Her tips really helped us. She also said they ate some last week and it was good.

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you how big the chicken breasts are. They are huge. Hubby decided to only put one in a bag after doing a few with two. They are more than big enough for a meal for two of us. I had very little trimming to do. No more than when I buy it at the market. I think this chicken should last us at least 6 months, if not more. 

The chicken cost me $ .79 a lb. with the use of a coupon code. I don’t think I have paid that price in at least 40 years. Our on sale price here is $2.00 a lb. The total was $ 31.60 and was taken out of my grocery budget of $ 75.00 a week. You can see from prior posts that I don’t use all of my grocery budget each week so that I can save for big orders like this. I have 20 lbs. wild Argentine red shrimp coming in July. 

With the chicken and shrimp orders and hopefully getting a great price on ground beef and steaks, we should be set for the entire spring, summer and fall. Of course, I always have to pick up bacon and sausage because of our Sunday family breakfasts.


Once we have eaten some of the chicken, I will let you know how we like it. If it is good, we will continue to purchase our chicken this way if the price is right.

The other day I cooked the last turkey in our freezer that we purchased at a rock bottom price last Thanksgiving. I don’t like heating up my house once it starts getting warm outside which should be soon. That is when the grilling begins. We have been enjoying all of the leftovers and I will make turkey soup today. I usually put rice in it but Hubby has requested noodles this time. 


Today will also be grocery shopping day. I will post my trip tomorrow. I don’t need that much.

Have any of you purchased chicken from Zaycon Fresh? Have you purchased any other meat or seafood item from them? I would love to hear of your experiences.