Today at Harris Teeter I was going to buy Perdue chicken breast which was on sale for $3.99. I knew that was a good deal, but I always like to confirm. So, I checked the price of the Harris Teeter brand chicken. It was $5.29/lb. (regular price). I was ready to load some Perdue into my cart when something caught my eye.
The large package of Harris Teeter chicken breast was only $3.29/lb. That was the regular price too. However, it was $2.00/lb. less than the exact same thing in a smaller package. It was also cheaper than the sale price for the Perdue chicken.
Wow! I guess when I was only buying for one person (before I was married), I never paid attention to those huge packages. Michael and I still won't eat $14 worth of chicken in one meal or even one week (thank goodness!). However, I have learned the value of freezing individual servings. So, I'm off to the kitchen now to prepare the chicken for freezing. We eat a fair amount of chicken, but this will last us several weeks.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Cheaper Chicken
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Freezing Individual Servings
As regular readers of Save 4 Fun know, I like freezing food. It helps to have ready-made meals prepared as well as a means of stocking up on sale items. However, I've found that sticking a whole package of meat in the freezer isn't always the best idea. Once you thaw it, you have to cook it. Maybe I don't want or need the whole package. Something I tried recently has worked well to help with this problem.
The first tip involves bacon. If you freeze a whole package, you can forget trying to pry one or two strips out until it's thawed. I don't always need a full package at once. So, the last time I bought bacon, I pulled apart the individual strips. Then, I laid them out on a baking sheet and put it in the freezer. Once they were frozen, I put them into a freezer bag. Now, I can just pull out a piece or two when I need it. The other night we had baked potatoes for dinner. I took two pieces of bacon out and cooked them. It was great on the potatoes. The rest of the bacon stays in the freezer until I need it another time.
The second tip is for chicken breasts. On Sunday when I purchased a package of skinless, boneless chicken breasts on sale, I decided not to freeze the whole package. Instead, I cut the three breasts length-wise. That created six thin but good sized chicken breasts. I froze them in the same way as I did the bacon. I'm kind of picky about my chicken. So, I was able to clean it up even more than how it sold before freezing it. Now, it is all ready to be cooked - either one piece or a bunch of them, depending on what the need is.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Trying to Make Quick, Cheap Meals When I Have Little Time
The wedding is getting closer, and my time is really at a premium lately. I don't really have a lot of time for looking for deals -- even visiting Coupon Mom's website which does make it really easy. Well, I guess, it's the fact that I don't have time to get to the store.
Luckily, I do have some foods and some necessities stock piled from when they were on sale. So, I'm still functioning well despite not really shopping in forever. I'm trying to use my time wisely too. I felt like I needed some vegetables for lunch, so I went to the grocery store that is in my office building and got a salad. Before I went, I took a quick peek at the weekly sale flyer online and found a few other things to pick up to help keep me a float between "real" shopping trips.
Dinner tonight will pretty good considering my lack of time and not really getting to the grocery store in a while. I'll have grilled chicken, sauteed zucchini, and baked beans. I had the chicken in the freezer from when I got it on sale several weeks ago. My parents gave me some zucchini from their garden that I cooked last night. I grabbed a can of Bush's baked beans which was on sale at the store today for $1.00. Another good thing is that it's a fast meal to prepare. More good news is that it will probably last me a couple of nights.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Coupons at Target
I love coupons -- and I love Coupon Mom for doing the work of figuring out the best way to use them.
As I've mentioned several times, I'm a bit short on time these days because of my upcoming wedding. (One month to go!) Yesterday, I realized that I was in desperate need of some breakfast and lunch foods. I haven't had the time or energy to really sit down and think about menus, sale ads, and coupons. However, I also can't just eat out for the next month either.
I knew Target had a couple of things on sale that I wanted and needed to get. So, on my lunch break yesterday, I took a look at Coupon Mom's website to see if there was anything else (particularly food) that I could get for a good deal while I was there. I wrote down what I wanted. I quickly grabbed the coupons between work and my final wedding dress fitting and spun by Target on the way home from the bridal shop. I got a few things to add to what I already have on hand, and I'm good for the rest of the week.
Here's what I got:
Pringles (25% extra in the can for no additional charge)
Sale Price: $1.00
Target coupon from their website: $0.50
Final Price: $0.50
Skippy peanut butter
Regular Price: $2.34
Target coupon from their website: $1.00
Final Price: $1.34
Classico pasta sauce
Regular Price: $2.39
Target coupon from their website: $1.00
Final Price: $1.39
Quaker Chewy Granola Bars (with 2 extra bars for no additional charge)
Regular Price: $2.19
Target coupon from their website: $0.50
Manufacturer coupon: $0.50
Final Price: $1.19
What's great about Target is that they will let you use store and manufacturer coupons on the same item. They will also let you print and use multiple store coupons (for the corresponding number of items) from their website.
I always forget to look at their coupons online -- so thank goodness Coupon Mom lets me know about the deals. Granted the prices in my area aren't quite as low as she has listed on her website. However, I realize that my area is probably more expensive than hers. These are all good deals for the DC area.
What I want to figure out is how to get on Target's mailing list. My sister gets great coupon books from Target every few months. She's not sure how she got on that list. She doesn't have their credit card, which is how I thought it might happen. Does anyone know about those coupons and how I can get them in the U.S. mail?
It's time to get back to my chores...
Friday, June 13, 2008
Say Cheese: Shredded vs. Block
I don't think I have a favorite Frugal Sense tip on Bankrate's contest this month. However, I did once try saving money on cheese as Ruth Neihart of Edmond suggests. I suppose it did save me a little money, but it wasn't something I really got into. However, if you think this is a tip you want to try, I suggest doing this kind of task in front of the TV. I did that the day I shredded a couple of blocks of cheddar. Being entertained while shredding made it go by a lot faster. One day I may give do-it-yourself shredding another shot, and if I do, I'll definitely be watching TV at the same time.
Another tip about cheese: I have a tendency to open a bag of cheese and not use it all up at once. (I suppose if you have a big family or are feeding a crowd, that wouldn't be an issue.) After the bag is opened, even if I seal it well and even if the expiration date hasn't passed, it usually will get moldy before I finish the leftover cheese. So, I now freeze the remaining part and use it another time. It thaws well, and I don't waste what I didn't immediately need.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
I Made It Through the Storm
Wednesday afternoon, evening, and night some fierce storms passed through the DC area. When I got home from work, I found that the electricity had gone out during the afternoon. It also disrupted our Internet service. I called Verizon to try to have it restored, but the representative said our router must have gone out. So, he shipped us a new one, which arrived yesterday. I hooked it up, but the Internet still wasn't working. Finally, this morning another Verizon rep was able to reboot our system, and we are back online!
Before the storms blew through, I had plans on Wednesday after work to go to the grocery store to finally do some regular shopping. I haven't been other to pick up an item or two in quite some time. I've been trying to use some of the many odds and ends that I have in my pantry and freezer. It's been a good way to trim some spending lately, but I thought I had finally hit the end of anything that would constitute a meal.
There wasn't more than 15 or 20 minutes between storms on Wednesday. So just about the time I'd think it was safe to go out and get ready to go, the pouring rain, thunder, and lightning returned. This happened several times before my sister got home about 8:00. When she blew in the door, she said, "Don't go out there!" There were tornado warnings, and the sky looked terrible. Great - was I going to have to eat a can of kidney beans for dinner?
Actually, it turned out I did have more food in the freezer! I had some really great spaghetti sauce I had made several months ago that I thought belonged to my sister. So, we pooled our food resources and had a nice spaghetti dinner with garlic toast and broccoli and cheese.
Once again, hurrah for the freezer! I love having easy food on hand!
As a side note, after I get married and will gain full control of the freezer and pantry for the household, I shouldn't have the problem of not knowing which stashed food belongs to whom. Managing the kitchen will become a lot easier!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Kraft Food & Family - Free Magazine & Coupons
If you get Kraft Foods' Food & Family magazine, look on page 28 of the Summer 2008 edition for a coupon for one free bottle of Kraft salad dressing, plus several other coupons.
This quarterly magazine is full of recipes, and each print edition comes with several coupons. If you want to get it in the mail for free, just register at Kraft's website. If you don't want the print edition, you can find all of the recipes on their website without having to register.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Last Day for Triple Coupons at Harris Teeter
Today is the last day of Harris Teeter's triple coupon promotion for this week, so I had to swing by there for some deals. I'm glad to see that they are doing this more often. They used to do it only once or twice a year, but now triple coupons come around every month or two. I do wish more of their sale items corresponded with coupons eligible for tripling (99 cents or less). However, even without sale prices, coupons that are tripled make some items good deals anyway.
I didn't do as well today as when I wrote about triple coupons back in November. But I did save 58% today, which is pretty good. That includes a package of McCormick's Grill Mates marinade that I got for free (because it was actually on sale for 75 cents and I had a 25-cent coupon that they tripled).
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Easy Dinner at Home: Slow Cooker
However, I'm not sure if I'd leave mine on while I'm out of the house as she suggests. We turn ours on overnight. Then, reheat the cooked food for dinner that the next night. When we were kids (but old enough to stay home alone, follow instructions, and plug in an appliance), Mom would have us start the slow cooker when we got home from school. She put all of the ingredients in the pot and put it in the refrigerator the previous night or that morning. Then, she'd leave us a note as to what time to put it on the base and plug it in. When she would get home from work, dinner would already be ready.
Like Melissa says in her tip, the slower cooker liners are awesome. Reynold's mak
es them, and they aren't too expensive -- especially if you can get them on sale and with a coupon. You just line the pot with one of the bags and then put the food in. When you are done and have removed the food, throw away the liner and quickly wipe down the pot.If you are like me, you'll eat more at home (and save!) if it's quick and easy. This is one great way to make cooking and cleaning a snap.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
How Much Could You Save by Packing Your Lunch?
I've discovered a fun new website about saving called FeedthePig.org (as in feed your piggy bank). The goal of the campaign behind this site is to encourage the 40 million Americans age 25 to 34 to take control of their personal finances. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and The Advertising Council sponsor/run the campaign as a part of their 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy program.
At FeedthePig.org, they have a lunch savings calculator. If you need some inspiration to bring your lunch to work, this could help! The numbers are amazing. A personal finance blogger called "Clever Dude" has a great article on his site that his nutritionist wife wrote about bringing your lunch to work. It will give you even more inspiration...and ideas on healthy, cheap lunch food.
This article and the calculator made me wonder: How much have I potentially saved during my adult working years by brown-bagging versus eating out? Let's do the math.
I've worked for my current employer for nearly 6 years, and I've brought my lunch nearly every day. (My previous employer had a free employee cafeteria, so there was no cost there. Hugh savings, but I'm not going to look at that right now.)
I've never calculated how much it costs for me to pack my lunch. I eat foods similar to what Clever Dude's wife suggests. So, I'm going to use her average of $2.20/day. I'm also going to use her estimate of $6.00/day for eating out. And I work roughly 20 days per month. I'll also use the default of 6% expected rate of return on the Feed the Pig lunch savings calculator.
Grand total of savings for 6 years: $6566!
Wow!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Save by Having Ready-to-Eat Food On-Hand
My favorite tip this month on Bankrate.com's Frugal Sense contest comes from Eric Barnes of San Francisco. He says that having food in the fridge is a good way to save on making unplanned trips to restaurants, and I agree.
When I'm hungry, I want something to eat right away. I don't want to have to go to the grocery store and buy ingredients and then have to come home and cook. It really is much easier to go out to eat at that point, but it will cost more. Even if I already have the ingredients on-hand, sometimes I'm too tired or hungry or don't have enough time to cook.
The one way to avoid this problem is to have ready-to-eat food on-hand. Stock up on your favorite frozen or very-easy-to-prepare foods when they go on sale. Or make more than what you need for a meal and freeze the leftovers.
Sometimes I just need a snack before I can begin cooking. This happens to me a lot after work. So, having good (and healthy) snack food in the cabinet or the fridge is usually just what I need to give me an energy boost to make dinner. Again, try to stock up on fruit (canned or seasonal fresh fruit), string cheese, granola bars, etc. when they go on sale.
One of my favorite snacks or light meals to have in the freezer are mini pizzas. I'm not a huge fan of store-bought frozen pizzas, but I do like ones that I make on my own and then freeze. If you haven't read it already, check out my post on Filling the Freezer. The fourth point tells you about my mini pizzas. If you have kids, I'd imagine they'd really enjoy having this type of snack/meal available to them as well.
So, thanks for the tip, Eric! Good luck in the Frugal Sense contest!
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Stock Up, But Don't Let It Go Bad
My mom, a faith Save 4 Fun reader, pointed out to me today after reading What's For Dinner? that you do have to be careful when stocking up on sale items: don't let the food expire. That's never really been a problem for me because I have limited pantry and freezer space. So, I do stock up on sale items, but I can usually very easily use them over the course of several months (before they pass their expiration dates). However, if you do buy a whole bunch of food on sale and then let it go bad, there's no savings there at all...in fact, there's a loss.
How can you prevent this problem?
Last year when Rite Aid bought out Eckerd, they had to unload all of the Eckerd brand products before Rite Aid hung their sign out front. For several weeks they offered 50% off on Eckerd products. So, I stocked up on calcium supplements and multivitamins which I take daily. However, before I bought them, I checked the expiration dates to make sure I could use 6 bottles before they were old. The vitamins had various expiration dates, so I chose the ones with the dates that were farthest into the future. I did a little mental math and realized that I would be able to use them in time. So, that's one way to work around this problem.
In my vitamin example, the ones I bought had different dates. So, I lined them up in my cabinet with the ones closest to expiring in the front and the ones with the far-away dates in the back. It's simply rotating your inventory just like a grocery store does with their food, so that the oldest products are sold/used first.
In the case of non-perishable and frozen foods, know what you have and how much longer you can keep it. If it's getting close to expiring, plug whatever you need to use soon into AllRecipes.com's ingredient search and find out what's for dinner tonight!
Monday, March 3, 2008
What's for Dinner?
Good question. I didn't go to the grocery store this weekend, so as of this afternoon, the answer was "Not much!" I knew I had a few staple items in the pantry and freezer, so that gave me a starting point. I went to one of my favorite recipe websites called AllRecipes.com and put "chicken" and "cream of chicken soup" into their ingredient search. It came up with a huge list of options. I found one that looked tasty, easy, relatively quick to make, and that wasn't going to cost a fortune in additional ingredients. I also realized that I had another one of the ingredients at home already: black beans.
So, I picked up a few more items on the way home from work. I had a pretty good dinner and will have leftovers for later in the week too.
Stocking up on staple foods that are either non-perishable and/or that freeze well is great. Get them when they go on sale. Then plug a few of the items into AllRecipes.com's ingredient search and find something good to make for dinner. If you get a number of the ingredients on sale in advance, it reduces the over cost of the recipe.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
My Frugal $ense Pick for February
February is nearly over, but I thought I'd share my favorite tip on Bankrate.com's Frugal $ense contest because it's a really good one that I already use. Bonnie Pineiro of Weymouth suggests making your own school snacks for kids by buying in bulk and packaging your own individual-sized snacks. When I was a kid, my parents did the same thing for our school lunches.
I don't have any children, but I do this for my own lunch that I take to work. In fact, this week I've had applesauce as part of my lunch. I bought a 24-ounce jar of it on sale for 79 cents. I've poured it into half-cup size reusable containers and put one in my lunch bag each day. Like in Bonnie's examples, it was far cheaper than buying the pre-packaged individual-sized containers of applesauce. And it takes very little time and effort to do the packaging myself.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Freezing More Food
Back in November, I wrote about Filling the Freezer. Reading Erin Huffstetler's article entitled I Can Freeze That? on About.com, I've learned that there are even more foods that I can freeze. I'm going to have to try her tip on freezing fresh herbs. I always hate when I have to buy a big bunch of herbs when I only need a little bit in a recipe. Inevitably, I end up throwing away the rest. Sometimes I might skip the herb (but that usually really takes away from the dish) or see if I have it in the dried version (but that's not the same and it's also not always possible, as in the case of cilantro). However, the frozen version of the fresh herbs might help solve this problem.
One thing that freezes well that Erin didn't mention in her article is an onion. Sometimes I only need part of an onion for a recipe. While the remaining portion can be kept in the refrigerator for a while, I don't usually get around to using it before it has gone bad. I've found out that you can freeze onions. So, I'll chop or slice the remaining part and then put it in a freezer bag or container. The next time I need to cook with an onion, I just get it out of the freezer. It's already chopped or sliced, which makes things faster for meal preparation.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
My Frugal $ense Pick for January
This month Bankrate.com has several tips on their Frugal $ense Contest that I really like. Picking just one favorite was a little difficult. However, for being unique, I'm going with Brenda's Host a dinner and eat for a week idea. The thought of gathering friends for an evening together and getting a week's worth of food after only making one casserole is awesome! I guess the one draw back is it doesn't work well if you (or some of your friends) are married and/or have children. But it would be great for a group of single friends.
Well, here's an idea for 3 couples: each couple brings 1 casserole that serves 6. Like Brenda suggests, only eat the one that the host cooks. Then, divide up the other two for everyone to take home. Each couple would get 2 two-serving dinners to go. Still a good deal!
Whether it's 6 singles or 3 couples, I think you'd also have to add some things to make it a full meal for a group (since you only get one serving). The group could divide up the extras: appetizers, salad, bread, drinks, desserts...and maybe the host gets off adding nothing else other than the location (including set-up and clean-up).
If you like this tip, vote "7" for Brenda this month! The contest ends January 31.
Friday, January 18, 2008
A Little Cooking Tip
Brown sugar isn't something I need on a regular basis, but it's a rather common ingredient. Here's the problem: I would buy a package of it and use a few tablespoons, a quarter of a cup, or maybe a half of a cup. I would seal up the rest. The next time I'd need brown sugar, it would be hard as a rock. A tip on the side of the box suggested microwaving part of it with a damp paper towel to soften it. However, then I'd have to use all of it right away. Chiseling part of it off was nearly impossible. I read another tip that said you can freeze the brown sugar to keep it from hardening. Then, I got a good idea!
The last time I bought a package of brown sugar, I used just a little. Then, I put the rest in resealable sandwich bags -- a quarter cup in each bag. (Snack size resealable bags work too.) You could measure out different amounts, but I've found quarter cup is the most common amount. Plus, you can just open several bags if you need more (i.e. 4 bags for 1 cup). Then, I put all of those little bags into a larger freezer bag and put the whole thing into the freezer. Whenever I need brown sugar, it's ready: measured and soft!
I no longer have to throw out the unusable brown sugar "brick" after only consuming a very small portion.
