El Rancho Trip 2/28: Shop Local Sales To Save Big!

Last week I told you about some of the meat deals going on right now in the Dallas area.  Today, I was finally able to get to one of the stores and take advantage of some of them, and some produce deals, too.  I went mostly to get the $0.98/lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, which we have been out of for quite some time.  I had also planned on getting some bone-in pork stew meat for the same price, but changed my mind after seeing it.  I did, however, notice that there was an unadvertised special on ground beef for $1.00/lb.  We were out of that, too so I picked up some of that instead of the pork.  Besides, I still had some chops in the freezer.

Here is what I was able to get at El Rancho Today:

15 lbs of chicken @ $0.98/lb=$14.95
10 lbs ground beef @ $1/lb=$10.01
2 5lb bags of russet potatoes @ $0.88 each=$1.76
8 cans tomatoes sauce @ 8 for $1=$1
6 tangerines @ 12 for $1= $0.50
8 avocadoes @ 8 for $1=$1
6 small apples @ 3 for $1= $2
4 yellow onions @ 3lbs for $1=$0.69

My total was $31.87, and to make things even better, I was able to pay for most of it with my $25 gift card that I received from my Prilosec rebate!  After the gift card, only $6.87 of that actually came out of our food budget for the month!

You might be thinking, my goodness that is a lot of meat!  Well, you would be right, it is.  Especially for a family of 4, whose children are 4 and 19 months.  But my husband is a teacher who gets paid once a month, so I try to stock up on meat for the month shortly after pay day.  It also helps to get so much at such a low price.  I will put this into the freezer until I am ready to cook it.  I freezer cook in batches, which means that one day I will cook up a whole bunch of chicken and then prepare several recipes using it.  The cooking time is no different, it just uses a bigger pot, and I can usually put away 8-12 chicken meals into my freezer in one evening (even more with ground beef!).  I have a few favorite recipes that I triple or quadruple, and then dinner time during the week is much less hectic. =)  I will be preparing for some major cooking this week!

I am actually wanting to try out some new recipes for chicken, so if you know of any, especially if they freeze well, please leave a link in the comments!  Thanks!