Find coupons & more at BeFrugal.com!
|
Archive for the ‘Coupon Menu Corner’ Category
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Wednesday marked day 3 of the Grocery Challenge! Here’s our menu:
Breakfast: I skipped breakfast, yet again. (Now I see the value in food journaling!) I think Jai had something from the stockpile, but I’m not sure.
Lunch:
 Leftovers from last night’s casserole, served with a fruit drink – a bartered item which I am writing a review of for Contest Corner. Jai wasn’t home for most of the day, so I packed some casserole for him to take along as his lunch.
Dinner:
I cooked up a few more recipes for the “Pace recipe challenge” that I mentioned yesterday. The salsa was bartered, and all the other ingredients came from my pantry and freezer stockpile. I made meat & potato pasties and a meat & potato pie, which will give us leftovers for a few days!
I served this with a bag of salad from my fridge. If you like, you can click here to get the full details on the recipes.
Posted in All You Challenge, Coupon Menu Corner | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
I’d like to start this by thanking all my readers for the kind words of condolence; it is truly appreciated. Keeping some semblance of normality during this time is very helpful to me, so let’s shift the focus a little bit and talk about the grocery challenge for a while.
Monday – Day 1 of the challenge
Breakfast: I skipped breakfast – a habit which I have gotten into lately and am working to break. Jai ate leftovers for his breakfast.
Lunch:
 Gardenburgers & freeze-dried fruit. The patties & buns came from my freezer, while the fruit samples were sent to me so that I can review them on Contest Corner – so those would fall under the “Barter” category.
Dinner:
 We had a lot of Chinese food leftover from the weekend, so I reheated it for dinner. The flavored fortune cookies are also samples for a review, so those are bartered items as well.
Tuesday – Day 2
Yesterday morning, I went to the store and purchased a gallon of milk, a quart of half-and-half, and three ears of corn, for a total of $6.76.
Breakfast: Jai skipped breakfast, while I had a SoyJoy bar from my stockpile. (I know these have kind of a bad reputation, but I actually enjoy them!)
Lunch: 
I had packed a lunch for Jai the night before, since he was going to be at work during the afternoon. After we got the news about Grandma, he cancelled his work appointment and ended up just eating the sack lunch at home.
 There was one Veggieburger left in the freezer, so I ate that along with some freeze-dried fruit, yogurt, and a protein drink. The yogurt and protein drink are also bartered items which I will be reviewing. Jai’s lunch also contained one of the freeze-dried fruit pouches and protein drinks, along with a Zone bar and peanuts, both from the stockpile.
Dinner:
I am also participating in a recipe challenge on my other blog. Pace Salsa sent me two jars of salsa for review, and asked me if I wanted to create some recipes using them. So for dinner last night, I modified my favorite Bean and Cheese Pie recipe to make this casserole – click here if you’d like the recipe.
Remember how I planted garlic back in October? Well, here it is now:
 I pulled one fresh head of garlic, which I chopped up and used in the casserole. Yum!
 The salsa was another bartered item, while the rest of the ingredients came from my stockpile.
I served it with the corn that I had bought that morning, and some wine that has been in my fridge for a while. As you can see, the recipe made a lot, so we had plenty for second helpings and lunch today.
Posted in All You Challenge, Coupon Menu Corner | No Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Phew – where did this week go?! It seems like I was just opening Monday’s emails, and now it’s Friday already. I think this week flew by especially fast due to all the summer weddings, graduations, and other special events that seem to be happening all at once. I haven’t even done any coupon shopping this week; I haven’t needed to, because of this:
I made this massive pan of chicken and potatoes on Monday, and we’ve gotten several meals out of it. Between this and the wedding buffets we’ve attended, we were pretty much set for meals this week.
I tried this recipe for Garlic Chicken and Roast Potatoes, which I highly recommend; it was delicious. I made a few modifications to the recipe to suit my taste – I substituted olive oil for butter, chopped the garlic, and halved the potatoes instead of chopping them into little pieces. I also slow-cooked it on a lower temperature than directed for about an hour and a half, which made it very tender. Jai thinks this is probably the best chicken he’s ever had, so we give this recipe two enthusiastic thumbs-up!
And it was also a very frugal meal. The chicken cost .34 cents, and I used roughly .20 cents worth of garlic. I also used nine potatoes, which came from a ten-pound bag that cost $1.79. I’m going to guess and say that I probably used less than .59 cents worth – I still have a giant bag left over. The maple syrup was a sample that I received because I am writing a review of the product for Contest Corner. So total cost for this pan of chicken, which fed both of us for multiple meals? About $2.33.
Oh, and I got the foil roast pan on clearance at Walgreens for .25 cents!
I also made a pancake brunch this week, which is worth mentioning because I discovered a frugal ingredient substitution:
For Christmas 2008, I made homemade gifts for everyone on my list, including bags of pancake mix. I ended up with more than I needed, so I still have a few bags in my cupboard. The mix calls for 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, and 2 cups of milk. I had just ran out of eggs, and didn’t have time to go to the store, so I did a Google search for substitutions. You’ve probably heard of substituting applesauce for eggs in cakes and brownies, but did you know that it works in pancakes too? I read mixed reviews of the results, but I’m an adventurous cook with loads of applesauce in the pantry, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I used 1/2 cup of applesauce in place of the eggs, and the pancakes turned out great.
Have you discovered any frugal recipes this week? I’d love to hear about it!
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Now that I’m over my flu/jet lag, it’s fun to start cooking again instead of just eating saltines for dinner. Here’s last night’s meal:
Shrimp Alfredo Linguine – yum! The total cost for this meal, which fed two people (plus seconds), was .91 cents. This includes the cost of the shrimp, the cost of the pasta kit, and the milk. The only other ingredient used was homemade olive oil, which I received as a Christmas present. I used half of the shrimp in the pasta, and half the previous day for our lunches – so we got two meals out of it.
A delicious dinner for .46 cents per serving – I’d say that’s pretty frugal!
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner | No Comments »
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
Friday night’s dinner:
Bok choy stir fry with green onions and peanuts, served over rice. I love making stir frys on nights when I don’t have a lot of time – it’s such a quick, simple dish to make. I sauteed the ingredients in olive oil, garlic, organic ginger, and soy sauce, which gave it a nice flavor. This was my first time cooking bok choy, and I really enjoyed it.
This ended up being an extremely cheap meal, thanks to coupons:
Bok choy – free with coupons.
Rice – free with coupons.
Peanuts – I still have a cabinet full of peanuts that I got for free last summer. Check out this post I made on Hot Coupon World for one example.
The green onions and garlic cost me $1.29 altogether. The olive oil was a homemade Christmas present that we received; the soy sauce and organic ginger have been in my pantry so long that I don’t recall exactly how much they were. I think the soy sauce was either a few cents or possibly free with coupons; the bottle of ginger was around $5.
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner | No Comments »
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
Costco:
Total spent: $21.89 – no coupons
View receipt
Got:
1 huge package of toilet paper
Since the TP stockpile was running low, I figured I should re-stock. Comparing the current sale prices on toilet paper, this seemed like the best deal to me, although it’s certainly not cheap.
Safeway:
Total spent: $25.34
Total before coupons: $36.34
View receipt #1
View receipt #2
Got:
2.25 pounds of organic, fair trade coffee – $9.99 a pound, used six $1/1 coupons that I found in the coffee aisle, which doubled – see more details below.
2 cans of Del Monte corn – on sale for $1, used two .50/1 coupons, which doubled. Free after coupons!
1 gallon of milk
1 pound of butter
1 bunch of green onions
1 head of red leaf lettuce
.42 pounds of mushrooms
.54 pounds of broccoli
1 carrot
1 head of garlic
I found coupons in the coffee aisle good for $1 off Millstone coffee. The coupon stated that it could be used on a half pound or more of bulk coffee. I filled two bags up to the half pound mark, and used two of the coupons, which doubled, taking off a total of $1.50 on each bag. This worked out to be a great deal, so I went back through the line and got four more bags! I filled each one up to the half pound mark, but since the weight is approximate, each bag came up at a slightly different weight and price.
This much coffee would normally cost $22.50, and I paid a total of $13.50. That’s like getting almost a pound of organic coffee free! Sure, I could get other types of coffee for less, but good coffee is a luxury that I don’t mind spending extra on.
After I got home, I used some of my purchases to make dinner:
Angel Hair pasta with mushrooms and green onions, salad, and homemade garlic bread. I used the rest of the whipping cream from Tuesday’s mushy peas to make the cream sauce for the pasta.
Posted in Costco, Coupon Menu Corner, Safeway | No Comments »
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
I decided to make fish and chips on Tuesday night, so I stopped by Safeway to pick up a few ingredients:
Total spent: $7.12
Total before coupons: $8.90
View receipt
Got:
1 bottle of malt vinegar – this is a non-negotiable ingredient when making fish and chips. Cost: $2.77, and worth every penny.
1 can of sweet peas – on sale for $1.15, used one .50/1 coupon that I received in the mail, which doubled. Final cost: .15 cents.
1 pint of whipping cream – marked down by .75 cents, due to the January 8th sell-by date. Fine by me, since I was buying it to use that night! Final cost: $1.54.
1 quart of half and half – I’m taking a break from Coffee-Mate to enjoy some half and half in my coffee. The Safeway brand is .40 cents cheaper, but the only cartons that they had were verging on expiration, so I had to pay more for this kind. Cost: $2.69.
Here’s how it turned out:
I made this as authentic as I could, although not having the same ingredients in the states makes it difficult to capture the taste. First, I took a piece of halibut that a friend gave us, and breaded it in homemade shake ‘n bake, inspired by this recipe. Normally the fish would be deep-fried, but since I don’t have a deep fryer, I just baked it. Then I cut up two small potatoes into chips, soaked them in cold water for about 5 minutes, and then drizzled them in olive oil and fried them in a pan for 10 minutes. I then stuck them on a baking sheet with the fish, and cooked until done.
This was served with a loaf of homemade bread and mushy peas. Most of you are probably thinking, “What on earth are mushy peas?!” This is a side dish traditionally served with fish and chips, and despite the somewhat dubious name, they are very good. You can buy canned mushy peas in England, but obviously I’ve never seen anything like that here. I did a Google search to see if I could find a recipe, and I came across this approximation using frozen/canned peas. The main problem is that mushy peas are always made from dried Marrowfat peas, which I have never seen over here. But I was feeling adventurous, so I figured I’d give the sweet peas a whirl and see how it turned out. Jai liked them, but I didn’t – the sweet flavor is just too strong for me. Guess I’ll be packing dried peas in my suitcase the next time I go back!
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner, Safeway | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
Welcome to the special Christmas edition of the coupon funded menu corner! Christmas usually involves large amounts of food, and this year was no exception. Here’s a look at some of the festive goodies that I made:
We were invited to a fun party on Christmas Eve, and I was asked to bring my seven layer dip, which was a hit at the Halloween party. This is so simple and really tasty. I put in two cans of refried beans, my loose interpretation of homemade guacamole (I smashed an avocado with lemon juice, salt and pepper, salsa and some fresh tomato), black olives, chopped tomato, salsa, cream cheese, and shredded cheese.
As I mentioned yesterday, I had decided to give everyone homemade gifts this year. I started by making some hot drink mixes:
I had planned to make gift bags full of homemade goodies for a while, and was mulling over the various things I might include. Well, frugal minds think alike, because Money Saving Mom posted that she was doing the same thing, and shared some great ideas on her blog. I liked her idea of giving homemade drink mixes, so I followed her lead and made Fireside Coffee Mix to put in my gift bags. I also made Swiss Mocha Mix from this recipe collection, and Spiced Hot Chocolate from the Gifts In a Jar e-book – which was also recommended by Money Saving Mom!
I also used this recipe for Pancake Mix, and made 15 bags to give out. Judging by what I heard from one of the recipients, this makes yummy pancakes!
To make the mixes festive, I packaged them in fun party favor bags, and tied them with ribbon. Then I made decorative tags that gave the name of the mix and directions for preparing it.
And it wouldn’t be Christmas without Mince Pies! I’m from England, and Mince Pies are a tradition there. All you really need to do to make them is buy a jar of mincemeat, which is basically a rich fruit filling. Then you make a pie crust – I always use my favorite oil crust recipe – and cut small circles with a biscuit cutter. Place one round into a cupcake pan, fill it with a dollop of mincemeat, and cover with another pastry round. Poke a few holes in the top with a fork, and bake until lightly browned. Let cool, and then cover with sifted confectioner’s sugar.
Mincemeat usually isn’t cheap in America, since it’s an imported item; It typically runs about $6.00 a jar. However, I lucked out a while ago, when I found a bunch of jars on clearance at Safeway for only .99 cents each! Suffice to say, I bought them out. And that was before I started using coupons – I’ve always been a stockpiler!
I packaged the Mince Pies in the party favor sacks, and included them in each gift bag. I made a big batch – 48 altogether.
Here’s the sum of each gift bag’s contents:
I still have a ton of Lindt chocolate bars from the great sale at Walgreens, so I put them to good use here.
And there you have it: all my Christmas list, taken care of! As you can see, I had quite a conveyor belt of goodies going on. The only exception to this was that I had gifts for 3 people that I had already picked up at the beginning of the year, which was good, because two of those people live far from me; so their gifts were easier to ship than this would have been. I also won a present for Jai in a giveaway – some of you may already know that I like entering giveaways and sweepstakes.
My cupboards are still full of baking supplies after making these goodies, so I should be well stocked for a while. I never even used any of the margarine or eggs that I bought – I ended up having more ambition than time, but my gifts still turned out pretty well, even though I didn’t bake as many things as I thought I would.
Side note: My Internet connection has been very unreliable today. The internet went down this afternoon and was out for most of the day. I’m hoping that the problems have been fixed, but we’re getting some stormy weather coming through so it may go down again in the next day or so.
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner, Holidays | 6 Comments »
Monday, December 29th, 2008
It’s been a while since I’ve shared my coupon menu! I haven’t been cooking that much this month because of my foot – we’ve mostly been eating takeaway or quickie meals. Boy, am I glad that things are getting back to normal again! Here’s what we had tonight:
BBQ Chicken, baked potatoes, and salad, served with homemade bread and tea. This meal wasn’t 100% coupon-funded, since Jai has done a lot of the shopping this month while I recovered. But I still made good use of many stockpile items!
Posted in Coupon Menu Corner | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
I had big shopping plans last week, but they were quickly abandoned during the holiday chaos!
Thanksgiving
Total spent: $9.67. NO COUPONS!!!
View receipt
Got:
1 gallon of milk
1 tub of whipped topping
1 dozen cage free eggs
3 foil pie pans
Wow. This one trip cost almost as much as my whole month’s budget for September! My original plan had been to hit up Walgreens, because they had some good overage deals going on that week. But with everything that was going on that day, I realized that there was no way that I’d have enough time to make the 30 minute drive to Walgreens, and still get back in time to make enough Pumpkin Pie for 13 people. So I axed that plan and just went to Safeway, since it’s so close to me, even though the sales there have been pretty nonexistent this past month. I needed the cool whip, eggs, and foil plates in order to make my pies – I only have one pie plate, and I was making three pies. I had originally planned to go to another store and buy a real pie plate, but the stores were so crammed that I ended up just grabbing some foil plates at Safeway so that I could go home! Also, we were out of milk, so I picked that up while I was there.
Grandma always hosts Thanksgiving at her house, so she cooked the main course and I brought the Pumpkin Pies for dessert:
I made my oil crust and used this recipe for homemade pumpkin pie filling. I still have a bunch of homemade pumpkin puree in my freezer from Halloween, so this worked out well.
Black Friday
I thought I’d have time for Walgreens on Friday, but it just wasn’t happening. However, I still wanted to pick up some things for dinner, so I just made this quick trip to Safeway:
Total spent: $10.16
Total before coupons: $13.66
View receipt
Got:
1 can of mushrooms – I wanted fresh mushrooms, but Safeway’s produce department was completely sold out of them. Weird!
2 Ragu pouches – on sale for $1, used two .50/1 coupons that I received in the mail. Free after doubles!
1 tub of Parmesan cheese
1 bottle of Coffee Mate – on sale for $3.79, used a $1/1 printable coupon, which doubled. (I was able to get another copy of this coupon by printing it from my laptop, in case you’re wondering how I got it.)
.81 pounds of bananas
.85 pounds of apples
1 head of red leaf lettuce
1 bag of sun dried tomatoes
If you look closely at my receipts for Thursday and Friday, you may notice that my gas rewards suddenly jumped up to 5. That’s because on Friday, there was a person standing in front of me in line who couldn’t find his club card. He tried to bring it up by punching in his phone number, but it didn’t work, so he just shrugged and said, “Oh well.” I asked if he wanted to use my card, so he did – he was very happy for the savings (you have to have a club card to get any of the sale prices, so you’d pay a lot more without one), and I got the credit towards my fuel discount, so everybody wins!
I had a houseful of guests all week, and I always have a blast making big meals – if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I love to cook! So here’s Friday’s dinner:
Spaghetti, salad, and homemade garlic bread. I made good use of my free pasta and pasta sauce, and added mushrooms, artichokes, green olives, onion, and garlic. For the salad, I used the red leaf lettuce, crispy onion toppings, sun dried tomatoes, and homemade croutons that I made using this recipe – these are SO good, you have to try them!
Posted in Black Friday, Coupon Menu Corner, Entertaining, Safeway | No Comments »
|
|
