the post that turned into an ad for Trader Joe’s by accident
I think it’s a good day for random bullets!
- The boy and I spent a great day puttering about town today. Just doing whatever we felt like. It was great!
- One of our stops was Trader Joe’s. God I love that place!
- DH is in Boston for a conference until tomorrow – hence our ‘free for all’ day. It kept us busy and kept us from missing him.
- I was glued to all the Blissdom tweets this afternoon. It’s a bit of a sickness, but It’s killing me that so many of my friends are in Nashville and I’m not!!
- It makes me long for BlogHer 09 in July. I booked my hotel reservations today just to make myself feel better.
Shhh, don’t tell dh! - Normally when dh goes out of town, the boy and I get Chinese food delivered. Since that’s not approved on my new healthy eating plan I wasn’t disappointed when the boy didn’t want it. Instead, he requested stuffing. For dinner. Stuffing?
- It was pretty good with Trader Joe’s sun dried tomato chicken sausage and some spinach though. Yum!
- While we were out today I broke down and bought a couple of things for the boy, a movie he’s been asking for, a bionicle, that sort of thing. What has he been playing with since we got home? The free balloon from Trader Joe’s. Of course.
- How many times can I say Trader Joe’s in one post??
- Trader Joe’s.
- If I say Trader Joe’s enough do you think they’d sponsor me for BlogHer? No? Huh.
- Tomorrow I’m roasting a head of garlic and eating it with organic crackers from, um, Trader Joe’s. Who wants to come over and get garlic breath with me?
Filed Under food, shopping, the boy Tagged groceries, shopping, the boy
soup obsessed
I think I spent the whole day in the kitchen today. I bought some great pork ribs cheap yesterday along with a 4 lb chicken for 3 bucks!
I had the ribs in the oven by 9 this morning (3 hours on 250 = perfect ribs no matter what sauce you like on them) so we had our “big” meal of the day for lunch. I like to do that as much as possible, although it’s hard to do on weekdays. I just think we all feel better if we have our smaller meal at night.
I also roasted the chicken to make soup with. I used my new Pampered Chef dish that my friend Nicole gave me for Christmas – I seriously love it. An hour and a quarter on 400, (covered) and the chicken comes out gorgeous.
We’ve been on a soup kick around here lately. Partly because it’s been so cold and snowy (another 7 inches last night!!) that it’s nice to have a soup cooking all the time, and partly because we’re (always) trying to eat healthier. We seem to eat a lot more veggies, and much less meat when we have soup. I’ve been skipping the pastas more now and going for brown rice, barley, black beans, and quinoa in our soups. It’s a good way to get more whole grains and fiber in our diet without really noticing it.
I have a hard time digesting whole grains when they aren’t cooked well so I can’t really have most of the whole grain breads on the market. If you can see the seeds I can’t eat it. Same goes for pasta. The whole grain versions are really hard on me. The only one I can eat is Ronzoni’s Smart Taste, which is basically a white pasta with added fiber (6 grams per serving). I just wish they would make a frozen ravioli or tortellini out of it! We love cheese filled pastas but they are all seem to be made out of white flour so we don’t have them very often.
I find myself obsessively reading ingredient labels for fiber, protein and sugar content lately and I’ve noticed some interesting things. Since we cut white rice out of our diet I just bought whatever brown rice was on the shelf. Last weekend I had three different brown rice brands to choose from. A well-known brand that was the highest price, a never-heard-of-before brand that was the lowest price, and an organic brand that was mid range.
Automatically I chose that lowest price, because, of course, rice is rice is rice. Right? Wrong. The no-name was only 1 gram of fiber per serving. I just happened to glance at it and that really surprised me – I thought it would be more! So I looked at the top name brand – same serving size but it was 2 grams of fiber. Huh? Okay, so what was the organic? 3 grams! Weird isn’t it? I suppose that means the organic is less processed so more of the rice germ remains?
Apparently I need to learn more about buying organic, and I need to pay even more attention than I am. If that’s really possible.
Btw, I bought barley on the same trip and wouldn’t you know, it has 5 grams per serving! It’s slightly more expensive than rice but I guess it’s worth it.
Bored yet? I know I’m analyzing my food way too much. Hopefully I’m not the only one!
Anyway, I have my rice, barley, and veggies cooking right now, just waiting for me to throw in the chicken. That means I have to go tear apart that darn carcass. That’s the only bad thing about making soup!
So what are you having for dinner?
ps. Got a good soup recipe for me? Make sure you leave me a link in comments, I’m always looking for new soup recipes to try out. (As long as it’s not beef!)
Filed Under cooking, food Tagged cooking, food, groceries, shopping, soup
grocery savings
It’s been awhile since we talked about the current high cost of living, but I think about it every time I go to the store. Sure, gas prices have gone down a bit, but groceries haven’t at all. I’ve come up with a few strategies to help me cut my grocery bill, including, gasp, the dreaded coupons.
Yes, coupons. I hate them, but they do help. I follow the rule of “only buy what you normally would anyway.” There are lots of coupons out there for things I don’t use and won’t try just because I have the coupon. I also make sure the coupon isn’t giving me a false sense of bargain shopping – if another brand is a better price even without a coupon of course I’m going with that one.
I’ve noticed more lately that my local grocery store not only gives me really good coupons at check out for items I actually buy, but they have quite a lot of printable coupons on their website. There are, in fact, lots of printable coupons across the web.
The best coupons of all though are the ones in the meat department. I don’t know if it’s just my store, or if others do it too, but when they need to get the meat and poultry sold quickly they put on “manager’s special” coupons on them. Certainly nothing has gone bad, it’s just getting too close for the sell by date for their comfort. Every time I go to the store now, I check the entire meat department to see what the best deal is, not only by sale price, but by how good the coupons are too.
My best deal so far was this week when they had an overabundance of ground turkey. It was already on sale 2 packs (1.25lb each) for $5.00, normally a package is $4.99 a piece so they were already half price. Then they each had a $1.00 off coupon. So I got name brand ground turkey for $1.20 per pound! That’s the best price I’ve ever seen for it, and we use a ton of ground turkey here (we don’t use any ground beef) so I bought 20 packages. Yes, I know that makes me a dork but I had plenty of room in my chest freezer and I now have enough meat to last through much of the winter.
So this is how I shop now. I plan my meals by what’s on sale and I how I can combine it with what I have in my pantry. I stock up on things I know I’m going to use. I also make a lot more soups and stews than I used to. It’s a great way to use up leftovers, and frankly, onions, carrots, rice and other soup makings are still relatively cheap.
So am I missing anything? What have you changed about your shopping habits lately? Do you have any other money saving tips? Can you tell I’m obsessed with this??
life’s little irritations #9
Latest irritation: the current prices of groceries. Frankly, it’s more than just a little irritation, it’s a huge aggravation for me.
I understand the whole concept about gas prices going up so shipping is more expensive blah blah blah. I call bullshit. You can’t tell me that every single item in the store needs to go up by 20-40 cents per item for them to make up for the extra shipping costs. Three cents, five cents? Maybe. But a can of black beans that used to be $0.69 is now $1.09? Eff that. Milk from a company in the same state I live in is up from $3.99 last winter to 4.29 now? Did their trucks really use 30 cents more in for every single gallon to be shipped? I have a really hard time believing that.
I think we’re being screwed – just because the product manufacturers and the grocery stores know they can get away with it. They have a great excuse and they know we have to buy food right? Well guess what? I’m just buying fewer extras, buying the no-brand items more often, buying in bulk, and waiting for good sales. (And don’t freaking tell me that taking 10 measly cents off a 2.99 item is a sale – it’s NOT.) I have a set amount I can spend and that’s not going to change.
Seriously, when was the last time you saw this make headlines in the news? When the economics of oil is discussed all I hear is about are the prices at the pump. When are we going to really talk about how gas prices are affecting EVERYTHING we buy, and far more than it should. This affects me every single day and I don’t want it buried on page 23 anymore.
As I see it it’s price gouging at its finest, it’s barely been perceptible as it’s crept up on us for the last few months and no one seems to notice. But I see it clearly now at the bottom of my register receipt.
Have you noticed this where you are? Has it affected your bottom line? Are you shopping differently now to lower your grocery bills? I’m really curious if I’m the only one that’s going crazy about this.
Filed Under life, shopping Tagged groceries, life, life's little irritations, rant, shopping