Safeway NW Deals for the Week of Nov. 5th, 2008

Safeway is finally doing a fun promo. This one mimics last year's Home for the Holiday's promo and is spend $40 on participating products receive $10 off your next order, spend $25, get $5.

Participating Products (from Hot Coupon World!):

Nestlé Baking Morsels 11 to 12-oz. Selected varieties 2 for $5
Bisquick Baking Mix 40-oz. Regular or Reduced Fat. 2 for $5
Progresso 100% Natural Broth 32-oz. Selected varieties. 2 for $4
Gold Medal Flour 5-lb. All Purpose or Unbleached. 2 for $3
Betty Crocker Specialty Potatoes 4.5 to 7.2-oz. Selected varieties. 4 for $5
Land O Lakes Spreadable Butter 15-oz. With Canola Oil. 2 for $7
Pam Cooking Spray 5 to 6-oz. $2.49
Hershey's Baking Cocoa 8-oz. Selected varieties. $2.49
Betty Crocker Muffin Mix 15.2 to 18.25-oz. 2 for $4
Supreme Betty Crocker Brownie Mix 19.5 to 22.5-oz. Selected varieties. 2 for $4
Wesson Cooking Oil 48-oz. Selected varieties. 3.99
12-Pack Pepsi 12-oz. bottles. Selected varieties. $4.99
Glad Storage or Freezer Bags 15 to 25-ct. 2 for $5
Early California Black Pitted Ripe Olives 5.75 to 6-oz. Selected varieties. 4 for $5
Reddi Wip Whipped Cream Aerosol 7-oz. Selected varieties. 2 for $5
Nestlé Cookie Dough 16 to 16.5-oz. Refrigerated. Selected varieties. 2 for $6
C&H Brown or Powdered Sugar 2-lb. Bag. 2 for $3
Betty Crocker Cake Mix 18 to 19.5-oz. Selected varieties. 89¢

I haven't seen any great scenarios out there, but I did notice some Nestle blinkies at Albertson's, so I assume they are elsewhere as well. They were for Nestle morsels, $1/2.

Some good deals (no coupon needed):

Rancher's Reserve Beef London Broil 50% off

Pears 10/$10

Grapes 10/$10

Broccoli Crowns $0.99/lb

48 Hour Sale

Florida's Natural or Safeway 100% OJ 2/$4

Quaker Oatmeal $1.57 (several coupons out for this!)

Safeway Select Icecream $2.49

And just for fun, here is my trip to Safeway last week, which was a fairly good one:



The Activa yogurt was free after sales, markdowns and coupons, cottage cheese was $0.50 each, cake mixes were $0.59 each, sugar was $1.65 after coupon/sale, Progresso Soup was $0.50 each after coupon/sale, chicken was $1.69/lb (I think that's right), whole wheat organic pasta was marked down to $1.09 for 1 lb boxes, a cookie mix was $0.75, broccoli was $0.99/lb, whole wheat flour was $2.99 each and the bag of potatoes was less than $2.00 I believe. All in all I spent about $27 for all of the above!

Waste Not: stale grains

This post is also part of Frugal Fridays at Biblical Womanhood!

Wasting food is a huge money drain. Most of us do it unintentionally once in awhile. In our quest to continue to lower our food bills while striving to improve our diet in quality, nutrition and taste, wasting food is not an option. Since the bulk of our breads, rolls and muffins are homemade, they get stale quickly. If I don't plan as well as I should I end up with dry cornbread, stale whole wheat bread slices, or crumbly muffins. Here are some ways I have found success in re-purposing these otherwise unusable grains into something with a new life!

Waffles: this morning I added the last piece of stale coffeecake, crumbled up into our whole grain waffles. I couldn't tell the difference, but it stretched the batter further!

Casseroles, Meatloaf, Meatballs etc.: for the casseroles you can use crumbled bread, cornbread etc. for a topping or stir it in with the other ingredients. Meatloaf and meatball recipes typically call for some sort of bread, so this is a simple substitution.


Muffins: Same as for waffles, just watch to make sure you lose a little of the flour called for so the muffins stay moist.

Soups/Stews: adding chunks of bread or cornbread stretches these inexpensive meals even further! Last night we added some chips that weren't super fresh to our chili, but bread would've been good as well.

How do you re-use stale grains?

The Perfect Hide-out

This week our little mouse is missing her "perfect hide-out" from our stay in NC. We cleared out the cleaners and other dangerous stuff from underneath the sink so she could play without danger. There was a handy bar that she could pull to shut the door when she was inside. Funny girl, even in the dark cupboard with the door shut she wasn't scared. I'd often find her in there with the door shut, chatting away to herself.

Going in...

Coming back out...

That was fun!

Menu Plan for the Week of Nov. 3rd, 2008

We are getting back into the swing of things and adjusting back to our time zone this week! Our trip to North Carolina went well, and I will tell you all more in another post as I get caught up! Here is what's on the menu this week:

Breakfasts: Waffles,eggs, Yogurt, fruit

Lunches: Leftovers

Snacks: fruit, crackers, cottage cheese, yogurt, homemade granola

Dinners:

Monday: Chili and Cornbread with Salad (make extra for Wed.)

Tuesday: Homemade Mac & Cheese w/ peas

Wednesday: Baked Potato Bar with toppings: chili (from Monday), sharp cheddar, sour cream, broccoli and butter

Thursday: Mexican Tortilla Casserole or Chicken Sopa

Friday: Braided Pizza and various raw veggies & dip

Saturday: Greek Spaghetti with homemade garlic bread

Sunday: Chicken Broccoli Casserole

Visit Laura at Orgjunkie for more menu plan inspiration!

Frugal Crochet

I am neither crafty nor creative. My mom selfishly did not pass down those sort of genetics down the ole family tree (to me anyway). The bro' stole them all and is a talented musician.


Anyway, there are a very few creative diversions that I would even care to do, much less have any sort of creative energy to do them. But now that I am a stay-at-home-mom, I have been feeling the itch to be creative in some way besides cooking.

Enter my creative (and patient) friend Marie. Last week she re-taught me to crochet! This is my first attmept at crocheting with the larger hook and at anything other than a scarf, so don't laugh too hard:)

The frugal part of all this? I have read you can use old t-shirts to do this! What a great way to repurpose something that has been hanging around using up your closet space. This rug was made from old fabric that Marie's relative cut into long strips and sewed together.

The finished product!



Here are some links to tutorials and pics and such if you are interested in learning more!

~Craftzine
~Crazy Mom Quilts
~Dances with Wools

There are lots more, those are just some to get you looking!

Here is M, enjoying the fruits of my labors. Apparently it is a great place to snuggle:)
We are still in N. Carolina, so the beautiful blue carpet isn't ours, sadly:)

Tuesday's Dinner: Tuna Noodle Casserole

Tuna Noodle Casserole has got to be a classic comfort food. Creamy, noodley goodness in a hot pan, no side dish needed. While away from home I wanted meals that would be simple to prepare (requiring few ingredients), yet were tasty and had enough redeeming nutrional value to keep us all well fed for the week.

This meal was great for another reason. I was able to bring several of the ingredients from home (tuna and whole grain noodles), so 2 less things to buy. Not only that but instead of buying an entire bag of overpriced potato chips for the topping, improvisation led me to substitute some cheesy crackers we brought with us for the topping. Not bad!

All the ingredients, assembled and ready to go:


Just a note here on the above ingredients: at home I would typically substitute homemade white sauce, as I talked about here.
The original recipe is here, but I added a half a bag of frozen peas, used half mozarella half sharp cheddar and lots of onion as well as salt/pepper to taste. Oh and 1 cup milk rather than the condensed milk called for.

All the ingredients in the greased casserole dish, sans topping:


With the cracker topping:


This fresh-out-of-the-oven picture didn't turn out very well, but you get the idea. For lunch the next day (and there were plenty of leftovers!) we added more milk, cheese and peas to freshen it up a bit and it was really good.

Blogher and Beans & Rice!

You'll probably notice something new on my sidebar...I now am a part of the blogher ad network! I am so excited to be accepted to join!

If you've never heard of blogher, find out more here. I am excited because I have been interested in finding a way to cover the cost of our internet through blogging, but wanted family-friendly advertising(or none at all)and this is it!

I probably will only make a few dollars (or maybe cents!) a month, especially to start, and the way I will do that is when people click on the ads (but don't feel pressured to do so). The ads I've seen on other blogher blogs have been great, so I am thinking they will be things my family, friends and regular readers will be interested in anyway.

Let me know what you think!