Cooking - what's that?

There hasn't been much cooking going on around the Vincent household. Seriously, for the past couple of months cooking around here has looked like warming up previously cooked chicken strips in the oven, hamburger helper, steaming vegetables in the microwave, and grilling burgers. Nothing blog worthy. My crystal ball doesn't show any blog worthy cooking in the future either!

I'm sure I'll be cooking more as the weather changes. There's just something about hot weather and turning on a stove or oven that doesn't appeal much to me.

CVS - how it's works for me

A little over a year ago, I had never stepped foot in a CVS drugstore. After I started reading blogs, I realized what I had been missing! CVS has a program using ECB ( Extra Care Bucks). The store runs weekly and months ads and certain items give you ECB's when you purchase them. The best times to score ECB deals are at the beginning of the month. For example, paper towels might be on sale for 4.99 and you will receive back 4.99 in ECB's. So, you've gotten them for free! ECB's print out on the bottom of your receipt. You just tear them off and use them like cash on your next purchase! The way to get cheap or even free product is by combining the store sales, previously acquired ECB's, and coupons. I did a couple of transactions today. Here's what I did:

Transaction 1: 2 Prilosec 42 ct. on sale for 24.77 will give back 5.00 in ECB ( for each one
purchased limit 2 per house)
used a 7.00 coupon and a 3.00 coupon ( from last Sunday's paper)
spent 39.54 out of pocket
got back 10.00 in ECB

Ok, I know that I started out by spending almost 40.00, but most people start by buying the free after ECB items. I'm always on the lookout for products that we have to have anyway. Jeremy takes Prilosec daily and luckily it is covered on my flex spending account that comes with my health insurance. So, I wasn't out any cash. I simply scanned my flex Visa card!

Transaction 2: Charmin 16 roll on sale for 9.99 (gives back 2 ECB)
2 Dawn dishwashing liquids 2/2.00 (gives back 1 ECB)

used .25 coupon for Charmin
used .25 coupon for Dawn

my total was 11.49 after coupons
I paid with 10.00 in ECB.

Total spent out of pocket 1.61 ( you still have to pay some tax)
ECB's earned this transaction 3.00

So, I actually made 1.39 on this transaction.

Transaction 3: Hefty 45 count garbage bags on sale for 6.99
used 1.00 off coupon
total was 5.99 plus tax
I paid with 3.00 in ECB, leaving 3.23 to pay out of pocket


Total spent out of pocket: 4.84
I could have stopped after transaction 2 and waited to use my ECB's on a product that would yielded more ECB's, but we really needed the garbage bags. ECB's are good for a month. I usually use all of my ECB's on one trip, rather than "rolling" them. However, more money can be saved by "rolling" them. For example, I could have taken my 3.00 ECB and saved them to spend on a item costing 4.99 and giving back 4.99 in ECB's. In that instance, only 1.99 would have been spent out of pocket.

I hope this doesn't sound confusing. It's really simple to do once you get the hang of it. My shopping trip today took about 10 minutes to plan out and maybe 10 minutes total in the store (and Hannah was with me which means I probably could have been out in 5 minutes if I had been alone:)

If I didn't want to worry about pairing up ECB's, sales, and coupons, I could have visited moneysavingmom.com, the centsible sawyer, or lifeasmom because they do this weekly and post it on their site.

My Favorite Summer Salad - Olive Garden Wannabe

I call this the Olive Garden Wannabe salad. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's pretty close!

Ingredients:

dark green salad mix

olives

Roma tomatoes

purple onion

italian croutons

parmesan cheese

Kraft Fat Free Cesar Italian dressing

Grocery Challenge: is it possible? does it work?

I'm three weeks into the grocery challenge of spending no more than 25.00 per week on groceries.  Is it possible?  Yes, it is!  I've found that it takes dedication  (it's hard to pass up those sales!) and a good amount of pre-planning (which I'm ok with).  By shopping at Aldi and combining sales at Kroger with coupons, I've been able to buy quite a bit with my weekly amount of money.

But, there's a flaw in my grocery challenge.  It's not valid.  Why you ask?  Maybe because we've eaten take out 3 nights this week and once over  the weekend!  So, I'm thinking that the end of the school year was not the best time to take this challenge.  It's a little hard to cook dinner for the family when I'm not getting home until 7:00 or later!  Well, some days it was 6:30 but I'm sure you understand.  The last thing I want to do when I'm getting home that late is cook.  If I had time over the weekend to cook the meals ahead of time and freeze them, we wouldn't have had to order out.  But, weekends have been busy too. 

So, where does that leave me and my grocery challenge?   I will continue to shop with a weekly budget, but might bump it up to $30 or $35 dollars a week.  That will leave me room for stockpiling sales items that we use frequently.  There are only 3 days of school left, which means that I will be home and available to cook supper each night, something that I'm actually looking forward to.  That will be a big help in sticking to the menu plan and actually eating the food that I bought with the grocery money!

I will be adding a tally of my monthly grocery expense on the sidebar, but I don't plan to continue the weekly grocery pictures and cost breakdown, UNLESS I find a super deal that I want to pass along.  

FYI : I'll start posting my favorite recipes soon! 

Extra trip to the grocery

I need to add about 20.00 to what I've spent on groceries this week. Seems that 6 cats eat a lot, especially when they're picky and only eat certain colors of the food! I picked up an 18 lb bag of cat food, some lunchables for Hannah, and some special shampoo for her hair.

Week 2 Shopping Trip

Here's what I got at Walmart:

Chow Mein noodles .87 x3 = 2.61

Pasta Salad (double box)  2.04

Tortillas 1.88

Strawberries 1.50

Dora spagetti-O's 1.00

Total: 9.03

Kroger shopping trip

cat food (not shown) 2.50

12 pack Big K cola  1.77

3 lb boneless skinless chicken breast 4.98

ice cream 1.99

Fisher ham 1.00

2 Oscar Meyer bologna 2.00

Smuckers hot fudge 2.79

black beans .84

tomato juice 1.49

Kroger Miracle Whip 1.99

 I didn't use any coupons this week!

Total: 21.59

Walmart 9.03 + Kroger 21.59 =$30.62

I had 4.67 left from last weeks shopping trip, so 4.67+ 25.00 = 29.67

I was over my budget by  95 cents.  Not too bad!  Luckily I had a spare dollar in my wallet and didn't have to  put something back! 

I also need to mention that I picked up 2 packs of Pullups ( one was marked down to 2.49!!), but I wasn't out any cash because I had a gift card from where I transferred a prescription to Rite Aid.  

Menu Plan Week of May 10 - 16, 2009

Sunday - Mother's Day lunch out - Kyoto supper - snacky foods

Monday - Chicken Enchiladas (using leftover chicken from last week), lemon pepper steamed
broccoli, ranch and bacon pasta salad

Tuesday - grilled steak, mashed potatoes, cheesy broccoli and cauliflower

Wednesday - on your own/leftovers

Thursday - Dixie Stampede creamy vegetable soup

Friday - celebration dinner for not getting a pink slip (Kyoto's for me and cheesesticks from Pizza Hut for Hannah)

Saturday - leftover Dixie Stampede soup and sandwiches