Getting Back To Couponing

I know I haven't posted in quite a while, and all I can say is what a wild few weeks!  Sometimes life just happens and you have to take a step back and deal with it.  I think the main thing was that I had taken on too many tutoring hours and that just made everything spiral out of hand.

My hours have calmed down now, and I am slowly but surely getting things back to normal around here (well, I was until my daughter got sent home with round 2 of headlice in 5 weeks time!  That caused a bit of extra laundry and time restraints!)

But, yes I am still around.  I am trying to refocus on my wise spending habits, as we had taken a detour through lack of menus and fast food drive throughs!  I've gotten all my coupons back in order, and for some reason that really helped me realize that there were really good deals to be had at the grocery stores this week!  (It's amazing what being familiar with your coupons will do!)

I was afraid I had completely forgotten how to use coupons it had been so long, but I think I did pretty well with an angry 3 year old in tow!

I went to two stores today:  Kroger and Albertsons.   I have been finding good milk markdowns when I go to Kroger, and today was no exception.   It wasn't necessarily a great "deal" today, as the mark down made the price the same as I would have paid at Aldi, but it saved me a trip to Aldi to get milk, so I was pleased.

Here is everything I got at Kroger:

I got 2 sets of mega items, plus a few other items we needed, and I spent $30.44 in all.   I thought that sounded a little high, but I was pleased still....until I just started looking over my receipt!  Those two jars of cheez whiz that you see marked for $0.35 each actually rang up for $4.29 each, so I was overcharged by nearly $8!  (I might have noticed had the angry three year old not been trying to grab candy!)  I will be going back down there to get my refund this afternoon!

After Kroger, I ran into Albertsons for a few of the frozen items they had on sale:

After coupons, I ended up paying just $5.89 for all of this.

I am stocked back up on fish sticks and chicken nuggets for a while, and I got them at below Aldi prices (that is my comparison these days).  I'm going to attempt to curb our late night pizza cravings with  frozen instead of Pizza Patron.  I've got some easy breakfast that will be a treat for the kids because we don't have them often and they are getting bored of the same old options.  I'm excited about my Silk because it's been soooo long since I've bought some, and I am ready for egg dying I do believe.

Did you get any good deals this week?

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Menu Plan Week 9--From The Freezer

I know I have been really quiet around here from quite some time.   It's just been crazy, hectic, busy, sickly times around here and a lot of balls got dropped along the way.   Well, ok...all of the balls got dropped along the way.   It feels like the whole month of February was one big flop around here, but I'm not going to worry about that.   I'm picking up and moving on.

A big part of moving on is picking back up on routines I had set in place.  One of those routines is making a menu plan.   I went the entirety of last week without a menu plan.  I did not like that.  Nope, nope, nope.

I had even gotten my bountiful basket last week, and haven't really known what to do with it:

We did have some salads and wraps, and I made 3 loaves of banana bread.

What really saved us was having a freezer full of meals.   I had been trying to plan easy meals for my husband to prepare while I was off tutoring...and last week that turned into...hey just grab something out the freezer ok?  I gotta run, bye!  But it worked.  We did eat out at Cici's on Friday night and pick up Sonic on the way home from Awana on Sunday, which is not ideal, but that's what happened....

So this week I'm trying to get back into forming a plan, but I'm also trying not to further overwhelm myself, because I have a lot of housework to catch up on and my mom is coming to stay with us on Saturday, so there's a little extra prep work involved in getting the room ready for her.

That being said, I'm keeping it pretty simple this week, and pulling from the freezer a lot (I've still got 34 meals ready to go in there!)

Monday:  I had bought some tortillas and tortilla chips and tri-colored peppers with the intention of thawing the chicken breast sometime this week and making fajitas.   Not gonna happen.  I will slice and freeze the peppers for when it does.

I decided to pull out the last tortilla soup tonight, and we will just have the chips and tortillas with that.   I even have frozen homemade salsa.

Tuesday:  I'll be tutoring.  They will pull a container of gumbo out of the freezer.

Wednesday:  Turkey Pot Pie

Thursday:  Italian Sausage Soup from the freezer and I will try to slice and fry up the small eggplant from our bountiful basket on the side.

Friday:  Tilapia  and a yet to be decided side dish

Saturday:  Burgers

Sunday:  Fried Fish and homemade fries  (I've still got a whole bag of small potatoes to use up from my basket).

I also need to use up the leeks.   I was considering just chopping them and freezer them in small portions until I needed them.  Has anyone ever tried this?  I have honestly never used a leek before, but they had a very strong oniony smell to me, so I assume that's about what they taste like.  I'm open to any advice or suggestions on that because I'm getting another basket on Saturday and they need to be out of the fridge by then.

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