I've got so much to share and of course my computer is dieing. I thought it had officially needed a death certificate the other night, but alas, it's back up and slowly working. I've managed to get all my pictures and files off of it at least.
I've even been super crafty lately but I'm too scared to overload the computer by trying to put pictures up, they will have to wait.
But for another shopping trip!
Hubs put $50 in the joint account for me to go grocery shopping with. This is one way that we watch our spending. If that's all I have to spend, that's it. We blocked our overdrafting services, so if I go over, the card is declined.
I bought a few convenience foods this week because it's supposed to be beautiful out. I don't want to waste too much time chopping, cutting, etc., when we could be outside playing.
Yo-Baby Yogurt - $2.49 (I have everything needed to make yogurt, I just keep forgetting to do it)
Corn Chex - $2.67 (This is one of the only Gluten-Free cereals and it's normally $4.25/box)
Hefty Fresh Extend Ziplock Bags - $2.32 (I've been buying so much produce and some of the lettuce just isn't making it a week. I was going to try to the Tupperware but they were so expensive. I figured I would try the ziplock backs and just keep washing them out if they work well)
2-1.75 qt Ruggles Ice Cream (Black Raspberry Chip and Moose Tracks Yogurt)- $4.00 (These were 2/$5 and if you bought 2 then you got an extra $1 off, so they ended up being 2/$4)
Smith's Sour Cream - $1.34 (This was on sale, I prefer it to store brand, it seems creamier and lasts longer)
2 Sunbelt Granola Bar Boxes (Oatmeal Raisin and Honey Oat) - $1.79/ea (These are for Hubs. He loves them and I can't make them much cheaper than that, especially if I had to buy raisins)
2 All Natural Chorizo Sausage- $0.99/ea (These are meat department specials. They're close to their freeze by dates. I love them in Black Eyed Pea Stew in the crockpot).
Hickory Farms Turkey Sausage Link- $2.99 (Again, a meat department special)
4-Softsoap Hand Soaps- $1.00/ea (I'm picky on my hand soap, these are also great for gifts)
V05 Shampoo and Conditioner- $0.99/ea (I'm trying to find cheap shampoo and conditioner that work. I'm almost out of the Suave so I figured I would try this one)
2 lb Baby Carrots - $1.99 (I said convenience food. But let's face it, when I want a healthy snack and Bear is awake, I know I won't peel carrots and eat them)
2.79 lb Red Cabbage - $2.20
3 ears of bi color sweet corn - $1.00
3 cucumbers - $0.99
1.19lb Green leaf lettuce (I did myself in, I wasn't paying attention. This should have been Boston lettuce at 2/$1.00) - $1.54 (I'm annoyed that I wasn't paying attention. Being careless costs money. Thankfully it was only $0.54 as I had 2 heads of lettuce).
.83 lb Red Leaf Lettuce - $1.07
.27 lb Radicchio - $1.62 (Don't be daunted by the price/lb. Radicchio is $5.99/lb, but a head of it is only about .25lb. It's got great nutrients and I love the taste. I think it adds so much when we have it with grilled chicken in a salad)
2 Bunches Radish - $1.00
2.51 lb Baby Red Potatoes - $1.73 (I wasn't paying attention here either, but it worked in my favor. These are sold in a container by weight. I though the sticker was the sale price, it said $2.54. Which is great. I buy these as a treat every once in a while. They're so sweet. Then when I checked my receipt, I realized they were even cheaper, only $0.39/lb)
1 bunch Spinach - $1.29 (I don't usually buy spinach because for some reason I only think it comes in that bag pre-cut which is really expensive. So when I saw the bunch for this price (it's a large amount) I was super excited!)
.89lb Roma Tomatoes - $1.15
Grand Total = $44.47 and I only had one coupon for $0.15 off my ziplock bags.
According to my receipt, I saved $14.34. You don't need to be an Extreme Couponer to save great. Besides, who needs 57 bottles of yellow mustard, or 34 containers of Instant Noodles. Now I have enough left to go to the other grocery store and get chicken breast if I feel like it.
I do not use a list to grocery shop. I am really good at mental math and I'm able to keep track of prices in my head really well. I also don't KNOW what I want. It all depends on the quality and price of produce. Also what is on sale. I managed to take Bear with me on this trip and it still only took us about 45 minutes.
The one plus about our grocery store? They bag the groceries and put them on a conveyor belt with takes them outside. You then drive up and they put them in the car for you. A HUGE help when you're trying to wrangle a stroller into the trunk and a baby into the carseat
And this is our local grocery store (a small chain). Remember this post? Well I can't say I've officially stayed away from Wal-Mart 100% but I've only been there maybe 2 or 3 times in a few months now. It feels great.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Saturday Savings #2
Eat out of your home. This includes home cooking all meals. Also, eat up any food you may have stored.
I'm a store-er. Not a hoarder. I keep emergency easy make meals such as hamburger helper, pasta and sauce and frozen meatloaf/meatballs. They're easy to store and don't perish quickly (precooked food in a deep freeze can last a year!). They're go to meals when I run out of time, or have doctor's appointments and we don't want to eat out. Being gluten-free makes it harder to eat out at restaurants, especially if I try to keep it inexpensive.
Start with consuming any food you have in your freezer and pantry. I always keep a well stocked pantry for emergency and a lot of my cooking comes from there. I usually just supplement with produce.
By doing this you'll use food you already owned, you can become more creative in the kitchen and you'll save money and time. Restaurant meals are at about 3 times more expensive than the same meal home cooked. Although I find pasta dishes are maked up much more than that. Olive Garden sells their marinara sauce and pasta for $7.95 (well the last time I was there they did). A pound of pasta is $1 and a jar of Ragu can be found for $1.66 (neither of these is sale prices) and that can feed 4 people!
When we get a medical bill we didn't foresee or we just want to put some money in savings we do a pantry challenge and eat as much out of our freezers and pantry before going shopping.
The best part of pantry challenges is the thrill of replacing it at the cheapest price possible.
I'm a store-er. Not a hoarder. I keep emergency easy make meals such as hamburger helper, pasta and sauce and frozen meatloaf/meatballs. They're easy to store and don't perish quickly (precooked food in a deep freeze can last a year!). They're go to meals when I run out of time, or have doctor's appointments and we don't want to eat out. Being gluten-free makes it harder to eat out at restaurants, especially if I try to keep it inexpensive.
Start with consuming any food you have in your freezer and pantry. I always keep a well stocked pantry for emergency and a lot of my cooking comes from there. I usually just supplement with produce.
By doing this you'll use food you already owned, you can become more creative in the kitchen and you'll save money and time. Restaurant meals are at about 3 times more expensive than the same meal home cooked. Although I find pasta dishes are maked up much more than that. Olive Garden sells their marinara sauce and pasta for $7.95 (well the last time I was there they did). A pound of pasta is $1 and a jar of Ragu can be found for $1.66 (neither of these is sale prices) and that can feed 4 people!
When we get a medical bill we didn't foresee or we just want to put some money in savings we do a pantry challenge and eat as much out of our freezers and pantry before going shopping.
The best part of pantry challenges is the thrill of replacing it at the cheapest price possible.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
April Accountability #4
My diet.
About 6 months before getting pregnant I went gluten-free. I was tired, I had gained about 60 lbs effortlessly and extremely uninterested in anything but laying on the couch. It was suggested that I could have Celiac Sprue disease by my Gastroenterologist so I did a gluten elimination challenge. I felt amazing about two weeks later and decided to have the blood work to check for the antibodies of Celiac. My test came back negative, however, I tainted the results by eliminating gluten for over two weeks. Since I felt amazing, and the only cure to Celiac is to be gluten-free, I decided to forgo repeat testing while eating gluten or a small bowel biopsy.
Then I got pregnant and remained gluten-free until about the 2nd trimester. At this point my stomach was not a happy camper. I sailed through the 1st trimester with no morning sickness or food aversion. Then Thanksgiving hit. While I was nausea free, ever single food made my stomach do somersaults. The only thing my body really seemed to respond to was, yep you guessed it, gluten-filled foods. Bread, pasta, and crackers were staples in my diet. I didn't seem to have a very negative response to it so I kept a gluten diet.
Then Bear was born and there was the stress of the NICU. I ate the free nursing-mother meals, which were gluten filled comfort foods. I lost 15lbs of the baby weight easily (then again Bear weighed 9lb at birth) and the rest have been stuck.
I've lost and regained the same 5lbs for 6 months now. I just figured it was the stress of special needs, and the hospitalizations, the fast food, the comfort eating. However, once things started to calm down I decided to clean up Hubs and my diet. I made homemade wheat bread and we ate salads and sandwiches. And I didn't lose a pound.
In the past two months I've been becoming increasingly more exhausted no matter how much sleep I have. And **TMI WARNING** my monthly period has been coming less and less. Last time was 90 days and I'm already up to 45 days this cycle. I'm guessing as my immune system is regulating it's becoming more and more sensitive to gluten.
Wednesday I had enough. I said farewell to some of my favorite friends and embraced my gluten-free lifestyle.
(all images from google search)
I know there are many gluten-free alternatives but the specialty flours are extremely expensive and most recipes are highly disappointing. Although, I do recommend the Betty Crocker Baking Mixes. I really liked the Chocolate Chip Cookies, however with a stick of butter they are probably pretty unhealthy.
I do think I will invest in some gluten free oats to try to convert a few recipes I have.
So on top of budgeting, driving less, cooking at home and working on my marriage. I have to frugally cook gluten-free.
I do this by
1) Buying very few gluten-free alternatives. My one allowance is pasta. I buy corn past from The Christmas Tree Shoppes for $1.29/bag. I haven't bought it in a while so the price may have changed.
2) I cook like a meat and potatoes kind of girl. I usually make some sort of protein, and a vegetable and starch.
3) I replace pasta with brown rice. Except for tomato sauce (yuck). We have turkey and gravy over rice, chicken and wild rice soup, you get the picture.
4) I do not buy seasonings or instant anything. There is LOTS of hidden gluten so the easiest way to avoid this is to cook at home.
In the past 2 days, I have more energy and am feeling "lighter". We'll see if this lasts.
About 6 months before getting pregnant I went gluten-free. I was tired, I had gained about 60 lbs effortlessly and extremely uninterested in anything but laying on the couch. It was suggested that I could have Celiac Sprue disease by my Gastroenterologist so I did a gluten elimination challenge. I felt amazing about two weeks later and decided to have the blood work to check for the antibodies of Celiac. My test came back negative, however, I tainted the results by eliminating gluten for over two weeks. Since I felt amazing, and the only cure to Celiac is to be gluten-free, I decided to forgo repeat testing while eating gluten or a small bowel biopsy.
Then I got pregnant and remained gluten-free until about the 2nd trimester. At this point my stomach was not a happy camper. I sailed through the 1st trimester with no morning sickness or food aversion. Then Thanksgiving hit. While I was nausea free, ever single food made my stomach do somersaults. The only thing my body really seemed to respond to was, yep you guessed it, gluten-filled foods. Bread, pasta, and crackers were staples in my diet. I didn't seem to have a very negative response to it so I kept a gluten diet.
Then Bear was born and there was the stress of the NICU. I ate the free nursing-mother meals, which were gluten filled comfort foods. I lost 15lbs of the baby weight easily (then again Bear weighed 9lb at birth) and the rest have been stuck.
I've lost and regained the same 5lbs for 6 months now. I just figured it was the stress of special needs, and the hospitalizations, the fast food, the comfort eating. However, once things started to calm down I decided to clean up Hubs and my diet. I made homemade wheat bread and we ate salads and sandwiches. And I didn't lose a pound.
In the past two months I've been becoming increasingly more exhausted no matter how much sleep I have. And **TMI WARNING** my monthly period has been coming less and less. Last time was 90 days and I'm already up to 45 days this cycle. I'm guessing as my immune system is regulating it's becoming more and more sensitive to gluten.
Wednesday I had enough. I said farewell to some of my favorite friends and embraced my gluten-free lifestyle.
(all images from google search)
I know there are many gluten-free alternatives but the specialty flours are extremely expensive and most recipes are highly disappointing. Although, I do recommend the Betty Crocker Baking Mixes. I really liked the Chocolate Chip Cookies, however with a stick of butter they are probably pretty unhealthy.
I do think I will invest in some gluten free oats to try to convert a few recipes I have.
So on top of budgeting, driving less, cooking at home and working on my marriage. I have to frugally cook gluten-free.
I do this by
1) Buying very few gluten-free alternatives. My one allowance is pasta. I buy corn past from The Christmas Tree Shoppes for $1.29/bag. I haven't bought it in a while so the price may have changed.
2) I cook like a meat and potatoes kind of girl. I usually make some sort of protein, and a vegetable and starch.
3) I replace pasta with brown rice. Except for tomato sauce (yuck). We have turkey and gravy over rice, chicken and wild rice soup, you get the picture.
4) I do not buy seasonings or instant anything. There is LOTS of hidden gluten so the easiest way to avoid this is to cook at home.
In the past 2 days, I have more energy and am feeling "lighter". We'll see if this lasts.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Cooking Success and Failure Week 2
Let's see how we did this week!
Saturday April 9
Lunch: we had a fun visit down to Amish country and picked up some lunch meat at a bulk food store. We had a picnic on the front porch of a furniture store (don't worry we stopped in to buy something first) with some homemade bread from home and snacks.
Dinner: I wasn't very hungry so Hubs had leftovers from salisbury steak night.
Sunday April 10
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: hot dogs, macaroni salad
Monday April 11
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Pizza Hut. We got home so late from the hospital and were wiped. Bear was melting down and by the time we got him settled and in bed it was so late and we were so hungry.
Tuesday April 12
Lunch: Sandwiches or Pizza
Dinner: Applebee's. I made a chicken crockpot dish. It smelled revolting and looked even worse. So we decided to go out (Yes twice in one week, but I felt it was warranted)
Wednesday April 13
Lunch: I picked up salad for lunch because I started Gluten Free (GF). Hubs had sandwiches
Dinner: Caesar salad, hot dogs (I had mine without a roll), frozen canteloupe and canned peaches
Thursday April 14
Lunch: Leftover salad or sandwiches
Dinner: Pancakes (I found a box of GF mix someone gave me) and turkey breakfast sausage.
Friday April 15
Lunch: Au Bon Pain for me, it was the only thing at the hospital and I was unable to bring anything from home, Hubs had Wendy's, he was on the road for work
Dinner: Jimmy John's, I had Cornish Hens out but Hubs said he really wanted sandwiches. I know you're all thinking, but didn't she just go GF? Jimmy John's offers an Unwich. It's they're sandwich (same amount of meat and condiments, etc) all wrapped up in very large lettuce leaves. It was fantastic, and the Beach Club (Turkey and Avocado) was only 200 calories. We also had potato chips.
I know it seems like we went out an awful lot, and we did. However, this has been one of THOSE weeks so the fact that we even made it through is success. I wish I could have cooked more, but days like yesterday (driving 40 minutes by myself with Bear at naptime, walking the 20 minute walk to the doctor's office, then back to the car, then back to the doctor's office, then back to the car, and then the 40 min drive home in traffic which became an hour) it took all my energy just to survive. So tough luck. Next week is a little calmer, however it ends in Easter. Although in our house holidays=leftovers!!! and less cooking afterwards.
I ended up having to purchase romaine lettuce and 2 packs hot dog rolls and macaroni salad and potato chips.
And as a follow up, that GF pancake/waffle mix was absolutely HORRID. Ruined the whole pancake experience. I thought with enough syrup it would mask the flavor. I was wrong, very wrong.
Saturday April 9
Lunch: we had a fun visit down to Amish country and picked up some lunch meat at a bulk food store. We had a picnic on the front porch of a furniture store (don't worry we stopped in to buy something first) with some homemade bread from home and snacks.
Dinner: I wasn't very hungry so Hubs had leftovers from salisbury steak night.
Sunday April 10
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: hot dogs, macaroni salad
Monday April 11
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Pizza Hut. We got home so late from the hospital and were wiped. Bear was melting down and by the time we got him settled and in bed it was so late and we were so hungry.
Tuesday April 12
Lunch: Sandwiches or Pizza
Dinner: Applebee's. I made a chicken crockpot dish. It smelled revolting and looked even worse. So we decided to go out (Yes twice in one week, but I felt it was warranted)
Wednesday April 13
Lunch: I picked up salad for lunch because I started Gluten Free (GF). Hubs had sandwiches
Dinner: Caesar salad, hot dogs (I had mine without a roll), frozen canteloupe and canned peaches
Thursday April 14
Lunch: Leftover salad or sandwiches
Dinner: Pancakes (I found a box of GF mix someone gave me) and turkey breakfast sausage.
Friday April 15
Lunch: Au Bon Pain for me, it was the only thing at the hospital and I was unable to bring anything from home, Hubs had Wendy's, he was on the road for work
Dinner: Jimmy John's, I had Cornish Hens out but Hubs said he really wanted sandwiches. I know you're all thinking, but didn't she just go GF? Jimmy John's offers an Unwich. It's they're sandwich (same amount of meat and condiments, etc) all wrapped up in very large lettuce leaves. It was fantastic, and the Beach Club (Turkey and Avocado) was only 200 calories. We also had potato chips.
I know it seems like we went out an awful lot, and we did. However, this has been one of THOSE weeks so the fact that we even made it through is success. I wish I could have cooked more, but days like yesterday (driving 40 minutes by myself with Bear at naptime, walking the 20 minute walk to the doctor's office, then back to the car, then back to the doctor's office, then back to the car, and then the 40 min drive home in traffic which became an hour) it took all my energy just to survive. So tough luck. Next week is a little calmer, however it ends in Easter. Although in our house holidays=leftovers!!! and less cooking afterwards.
I ended up having to purchase romaine lettuce and 2 packs hot dog rolls and macaroni salad and potato chips.
And as a follow up, that GF pancake/waffle mix was absolutely HORRID. Ruined the whole pancake experience. I thought with enough syrup it would mask the flavor. I was wrong, very wrong.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
In like a Lion...
Whoever wrote that old saying of "March comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb" really needs to get a new animal picture book.
March is going out like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We got snow. The road and driveway were COVERED last night but I guess they plowed and salted. The lighting is horrible because it's that dreary and overcast outside. And yes, our garbage can is still there from yesterday.
Hubs, Bear, and I all got the Plague this past week. I'm still coughing (my chest feels like a baby rattle) but Hubs and Bear seem to be on the mend.
I'm still working on my knitting WIP. Slow and steady win the race. Right? Right?! Slow and steady. The tutorial has already bound off their 8" long washcloth and started a new one using the Purl stitch. Mine knit is about 3" long (and that's being generous). I just don't seem to have the rhythm down.
April is going to be a month of accountability. With the Plague there was lots of whining and moaning and "I'm too tired to cook" (with a huge draw on the oo of cook). There was lots of restaurant meals totally blowing our food budget. We even went out for pancakes. Seriously??!!! Pancakes cost like $1 to make for both of us and we blew about $11 going out to the local grocery store. Our one grocery store chain has restaurants in it. Sit down, full service restaurants. Does anyone else have these?
I'm still working on our "How our home runs" Binders. I managed to get the section pages started and a few labels put on. But the insides are mostly blank. Our bills have run amok for right the moment. We forgot about the electric bill. But thanks to some quick consigning of outgrown baby clothes and hand me down gear we didn't use, we paid it in plenty of time. Our taxes are complete and we're awaiting an ample tax refund to help us be credit card debt free. Slow and steady wins the race.
Hopefully a few more days and I'll finally be back to me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
