I just scored $64 worth of meat for $25!

I love getting a great deal and I have to share with y'all my trip to Harris Teeter just now.  The hubs wanted lottery tickets for tonight's $400M jackpot and asked me to run out for them.  He is already out but is unable to stop.  *sigh*  I was not happy about going to the ATM for cash and then hitting a grocery store at evening rush hour, but out I went.

As I'm walking in the door, I glance at the front page of the sales ad that ends today and see B2G3 free of shrimp.  Shrimp is B's favorite food in the world, so I headed back to the seafood department after getting the lottery tickets.  Turns out it was buy two 2 lb bags of shrimp and get three 2 lb bags free.  Ten pounds of shrimp is a bit much ;o) so I passed.

But while I was in the back of the store, I perused the meat section.  I only shop at the Teeter if I need one or two things (and I don't want to go farther to Wegmans) or I'm getting Teeter's Friday night fried chicken special.  But if I need to be in the back of the store, I check the meat department for markdowns.  I hit the mother load today!

1. Ready to Cook chicken breast stuffed with Bleu cheese and wrapped in bacon, 9oz.  Regularly $4.99, got it for $1.99.
2. Ready to Cook Chicken Cordon Bleu, 10oz.  Regularly $4.99, got it for $1.99.  Both this one and the one above have a sell by date of 3/19/14, so dinner for tomorrow is done!
3. Three Ribeye steaks, totaling 2.63 lbs.  Regularly $36.79, got them for $12.86.  
4. Trimmed and tied pork loin roast, 2.32 lbs.  Regularly $9.95, got it for $4.71.  That works out to $2.03/lb and I know I can buy a whole pork loin on sale for $1.99/lb.  But I'd have to wait for a sale, unwrap it, break it down into small roasts and chops and rewrap for freezing.  This roast is already trimmed and tied and a perfect size to feed my family for a week or to serve the next time we have guests.
5. Fresh Johnsonville Irish O'Garlic sausage.  Now, this one wasn't as big of a savings as the other items.  The 1 lb 3 oz package is regularly $5.49 and had a store coupon of  $1.50 on it since St. Patrick's Day is over.  This is for the hubs who will literally do a jig when he comes home and sees it.  Since I got such good deals on the other meats, and I want to see his jig, I "splurged" on this for him.

With tax the original price of all this would have been $63.77 but I got it all for $25.18.  It was meant to be and my freezer and I are very happy (we were down to just chicken breasts and ground beef before I went to the store).

Reviews-day Tuesday: Cozi Online Family Organizer

I don't think there are enough products in my life to do a review every Tuesday.  However it's Tuesday, I've decided to share something with you that has helped our family and the blog title sounded appropriate and cute.  The next time I decide to share an item I've tried, I'll try to remember to do so on a Tuesday.

I've talked to y'all in the past about my favorite family planner/calendar,  the More Times Mom Family Organizer. I've even given one of these away because I wanted to share it with others.  However, due to recent health issues and stress, my memory has gone kaput! Most days over the last year and a half, I didn't remember to look at my calendar. My aunt had invited 2 of my cousins and me to a wonderful event last year and I forgot all about it because I didn't even remember I had a calendar to look at. Everytime I think of that, I am still embarrassed!  It's been really rough living inside this body and the stress I piled on myself when things like this happened just made the memory issues worse.  Even when I looked at my calendar and repeated an appointment on there over and over in my head, as soon as I turned away from the calendar, it was forgotten.

Since last Fall, I've been going to doctors appointments a lot.  At the end of each one I would be asked when I could come back for this or that test and then when can I come back to discuss the test results.  I had no idea when I was or was not free!  I would have to call them back when I got home after checking my calendar, but that also posed problems.  1) I could have obligations that I just forgot to write on my calendar, and 2) I have a terrible fear of phones.  I would put off calling a doctor for weeks because I simply could not make myself pick up the phone and call.  I needed something else to keep track of my life because my way of life no longer worked with my beloved MTM Family Organizer (oh, how I truly grieved over that loss!).

Then one day at the beginning of the year I was on The Fly Lady's website looking for a Contol Journal for B. I had decided that he needed something to keep him on top of his household obligations and school lessons.  He was old enough and I was tired of having to remind him all the time.  (Well, it's kind of hard for a child to be organized and remember everything when he has such a poor example in his Mom!)

While The Student Control Journal  was printing, I looked around Fly Lady.  I hadn't been there in a while, but she has helped me organize parts of my life before - for example, Cruising through Christmas & doing Christmas cards - so I wanted to see what's new. I was clicking on all the headings at the top and bottom of her homepage and one was "Cozi". I had no idea what that meant so I went to the page to find out.  According to The Fly Lady's website:

"FlyLady.net and Cozi have teamed up to bring to you the FlyLady Online Organizer. This is a web-based calendar and organizer program that will allow you to schedule, plan, have time-zone-specific reminders, shopping lists, to-do lists, a family journal section that you can even opt in to post to  Facebook, and more! Oh yes, and we did mention it’s free?"

I was curious, so I went to Cozi's website and read more about it.  It sounded good and, since it was free, I decided to sign up. I really liked what was included!  I was quite overwhelmed in the calendar, however, because it was full of Fly Lady reminders on each day. I am not currently "flying" with her system and would not need those, but soon figured out how to hide them all.  I immediately added a couple of items to the calendar, looked at the list options and perused the recipe bank.  It was quite
easy to maneuver through.

Menu Planning & Grocery Spending

Our food costs are way out of control!  It is obscene how much money I spend to feed a family of 3 each month  and I've been perplexed on how to bring it down.  Couponing doesn't help.  I shop at Wegmans and I can get their store brand items cheaper than any name brand + a coupon.  And their store brand products are just as good, if not better, than most name brands.  In addition to spending a ton at the grocery store, I eat out too much.  "Hi, I'm Jess, and I'm a fast food addict."  How many of you said in your head, "Hi, Jess" after you read that last sentence?  hehehe  We've been eating out at a nice sit down restaurant once a pay period and if you add drinks to dinner, that's a hefty bill.  And getting pizza or Chinese takeout once a pay period adds up, too...I'm trying to be real here and lay all my cards on the table.  As a side, I was talking with my friend, CC, earlier this Summer about writing a book.  I'm worried that strangers won't "get" me or find me entertaining because they don't know me; they've never heard me speak.  My friends hear my voice in their head when they read my blog.  She said I will connect with strangers because I talk about things that other people think or have experienced but don't talk about it.  So they will relate to me.  That was great encouragement to me and I love CC even more for that.  Anywho, so I'm bearing my food soul here for you peeps and we can't be spending our too few dollars on all this food!

All the bloggers who save a ton of money credit extreme couponing, menu planning and shopping only once a month with keeping food budgets low.  They also live in areas that have cheaper costs of living than I do and have a variety of lower cost grocery stores around, i.e. Aldi, Kroger, Publix, etc.  I thought shopping once a month was ridiculous; what about produce?!  It's not going to last that long!  Then Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling guest posted on Money Saving Mom and she listed specifically which produce items they eat the 1st, 2nd and 3rd weeks and then canned produce the 4th week.  Pretty impressive!  I rarely by canned produce, unless it's specifically required for a recipe and there really is no substitute, i.e. a jar of marinated artichoke hearts for spinach and artichoke dip.  But I do buy frozen produce and have even frozen fresh produce I've grown, picked or bought.  So, I can make produce stretch a month.

I've done my fair share of menu planning.  Y'all have seen me fall of and climb back on that bandwagon over and over and over...  But I only planned dinner menus.  I realized earlier this week that that has been my problem!  By not planning or buying for all lunches and breakfasts, there's not enough in the house for those meals.  Hence I go out more and B eats cereal every morning.  And that shit has got to change! So, I made a menu plan for 3 meals a day Wednesday, being conscious of what is already in the house.  I saved over a third at Wegmans yesterday over my last shopping trip.  Now granted, two weeks ago, we were out of all meat, so I had to restock our meats.  When I do that every 2 months, the bill is higher.  But during my last shopping trip, I bought half the meats at Costco, so I still saved some good money at Wegmans yesterday.  :o)  I planned 14 Breakfasts and 14 Lunches but only 12 Dinners because there will be 2 "Leftover Wednesdays" in there.

So, fingers crossed that I am turing over a new leaf and am on the track to food savings!  Now I'm off to type up the menu plan from my notes and hang it in the kitchen for all to see and stick to.  Pray for me!

UPDATE!

I showed B the printed out menu plan.  He started hyperventilating over the fact that cereal for breakfast is listed only 3 times in 14 days.  LOL  But he got excited when I let him pick out what we'll have for dinner tonight - Saffron Rice with Shrimp - and I intend to have him help me.  He taped the menu plan on the front of the top oven, "Where all the magic happens," he said and had to add some drawings.  It's very simple, and I hope to improve on the variety, but it's a start: