Recipes

Items that freeze well

I am making a list of items that freeze well and I will add to this list when someone gives me a new idea or I find something else I can freeze.

Here is a list of items that I have found that freeze well and the best way to thaw them.

1. BREAD. Freeze in the normal bread plastic this will last around a month in the freezer. To thaw simply lay on the counter.

2. Hot Dog and Hamburger buns. Pretty much same as the bread. Freeze in the normal bread plastic this will last around a month in the freezer. To thaw simply lay on the counter.

3. TORTILLAS. Freeze in the plastic it comes in. Thaw a day before you plan on using them. I recently tried this and they were great.

4. WAFFLES and/or PANCAKES. I usually make a double or triple batch. Let them cool on a wire rack individually separated. Once cool freeze. Place in large plastic freezer sealing bags. Pancakes and Waffles are best reheated in the toaster and use the frozen setting if you have a toaster with this option. However, my waffle maker makes the Belgian waffles and they are too big for the toaster. I heat them in the microwave on one side for 1 minute, flip then the other side for 30sec. It depends on your microwave as to how long you need to do this for the center not to still be frozen.

5. Fruit in season. Especially berries and bananas. I have even washed strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and freeze them in the container. For some reason they do not get freezer burn. I also will puree the berries and freeze them as 1/4 cup in baggies and freeze them flat. Then you have berry puree for pancakes, waffles, homemade ice cream and brownies whenever you want. I just cut up the banana into small bite size pieces so it will blend well. This will keep a long time.

6. Broccoli and Cauliflower. I just lightly steam them for a couple of minutes, cut the heads up into bite size pieces. Freeze in a larger Ziploc bag. Enough for a meal for your family. Take out when ready. Sometimes broccoli and cauliflower are even cheaper fresh rather than buying the already frozen and more nutritious. I also make purees out of them. Put them in ¼ cup baggies and add them to meals to sneak in extra veggies on my kids who don’t like them.

7. Squash. I love Acorn and Butternut squash. You can usually get this in season for under a $1.00 a pound. I bake it in the oven for around an hour at 400. Then the inside is soft to scoop out. I will make either a butternut squash soup or just freeze in ¼ cup baggies and use in meals.

8. Rice. I love to make a large batch of Rice. It takes as long to make 1 cup as it does 3. Let the rice cool. I then portion it out to a normal meal and then freeze in a baggie. Lay on the counter to thaw. You can heat in the baggie, but I perfer to take it out and heat in a bowl. I just don't think the plastic is safe for my family.

 Do you have anything you freeze that is not listed? Share your ideas. I would love to hear from you .

Kroger Shopping

Yeah it is link up Friday! Do you have a shopping trip where you saved oodles? Please share your link so we can see how well you did and learn some of your tricks. If you have a link to more than one post you can share more than one if you wish. Let’s see if I can get more than 10 this week. Are you up for the challenge?

I am going to post about a Kroger trip I did on Tuesday. I thought people would like to know my Mega deals this week, so I posted that one early. I had a few more things I wanted to get for my family on the last sale before it was over. I was at 68% nearly the 70% I am striving for one day. I did have to purchase Pullups however, I had a coupon that made them cheaper than at Walmart. We are still working on potty training. He has got the BM’s down, now he just needs to learn that pee goes in the potty too! I have tried to explain to him if it comes out of you, it needs to go in the potty. I don’t think he understood that. I am trying to find humor in all this. I am saving a ton on wipes right now. I am so glad I am not going to have to purchase those anymore.

Here are my results:

(1) Pull ups Boy $9.51 - $2/1  Q Printable
(1) Kandoo wipes $1.39 – $1/1 Q Printable
            -Final $0.39
(4) Listerine Pocket Packs 24 count $1.00 – 4 $1/1 Listerine Pocket Packs SS 4/17
            -FREE each
(2) J & J Floss (REACH floss) $0.99 – 2 $1/1 Q Reach floss SS 4/14
            - FREE +$0.01 Money Maker each
(1) Hairbo Gummy Bears $1.00 - $0.30/1 Q Printable Tripled
            -Final $0.10
(1) Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Grahams $1.00 - $0.35 eQ Kroger
            -Final $0.65
(2) Mom’s Organic Cereal $1.49 – 2 $0.75/1 printable – For the mega event these are $0.99
            -Final $0.75 each
(4) Tony’s Pizza $1.00 – 2 $1/2 Q Tony’s Pizza Frozen Safeway coupon book
            -Final $0.50 each
(2) Kraft 2% cheese slices $1.79 – 2 $1/1 Q Printable still on sale this week STOCK UP!
            -Final $0.79 each

My total spent was $14.29 and my total saved was $29.24 or 68%.

Share your trips this week or share your savings blog with others. I would love to hear from you this week. I enjoy visiting the sites that link up. I like to see ways other people save.

Happy Shopping!

LINK UP below!

Sprouts

It is with pain I am writing to you today. The arthritis is back in my right index finger thanks to the cold snap we had earlier this week. I can barely bend it. I can still type ok only a little pain. I am taking my over the counter medicine I bought at B1G1 and an additional $10.00 off thanks to couponing.

I am trying to decide on some new articles to write. I am full of ideas, but I haven’t actually put anything down in writing yet. So I am getting started on that today right after this post. I have thought of providing some recipes, food storing tips, ways to stretch a box meal and time saving tips as regular posts on days I don’t go shopping. Let me know if there is something you would like more information about or would like to share. If you send me an article you would love to share, I will be sure you receive credit and a link back to your site.

This Wednesday I went shopping at Sprouts for my produce. The prices are so much better than any other chain store and I love to shop there. I have described this as a Whole Foods, but not as large and retail as Whole Foods is. Sprouts is very health food conscious. I really enjoy shopping there. I found some great deals there this week. I even found a new product I had been looking for at Kroger, but there is never anyone to help you at Kroger. Sprouts is small and they are always willing to help you there. I was looking for the So Delicious Coconut Milk. I always see it really cheap at Kroger, but I have yet to find it there. I found out I was looking in the wrong spot the whole time. I was looking in the organic refrigerated section; it is located in the organic aisle with the non refrigerated soy milks. I never thought to look there. Now I know where to find it in Kroger next time. Maybe next time I will get it for FREE! Even better.

Here is how I did at Sprouts this week:

Kroger Shopping

I went shopping today at Kroger for the MEGA event sale. I was so excited pasta was on sale again. My family had not eaten all the pasta from the last mega event when pasta was on sale. I am starting to understand more how Kroger sale cycles work. I started in February with my extreme couponing for normal people. This is the last time I went to Kroger and pasta was on sale click here. So you can see the sales cycles are around 7 to 8 weeks apart. I bought 8 boxes of pasta last time thinking about 1 box a week would be enough. It was more than enough. I am really starting to accumulate a large stockpile of items I can use. I am finding clever ways to store all my items too. My pantry is full, so I had to move on to my cabinets that had a few bare spaces. My husband needs to get busy with the extra shelf I want built in the laundry room.

I went over my budget for this week once again, by $10.00. I had to find some filler items to make the Mega event work. I also went to Sprouts today. I will write about that tomorrow. I am not going to only spend $40.00 next week. I know I can do it.  I am always up for a challenge.

The register would not take two of my coupons for the yogurt, since I had an ecoupon loaded on my Kroger card. However, when I looked at my receipt the ecoupon was used for two, but the other two did not have a coupon. I could have gone to customer service and gotten $1.60 off my bill, but little face was done shopping and so was I. I am planning on using these next week. With Kroger shopping cycles it appears this sale will be going on next week too. I am crossing my fingers. I will just stock up on the things I already have and freeze the yogurt.

Also the bread guy told me the Kroger hotdog buns are going on sale this weekend for 2 for $1.00. I bought two hamburger buns instead.

Finally here is how I did:

FREEBIES

Freebies this week. I did receive a couple of freebies in the mail this week. I posted about the FREE popcorn here. I just received this in the mail this week and I also received my FREE degree deodorant for liking them on Facebook.

Free Deodorant

 Free Popcorn

Here are some blogs where you can get a list of free items:

Blue Grass Savers

Mom's free blog

Sayvings

Sweet Free Stuff

Thanks. Link UP below.

Kroger Shopping

It is LINK UP Friday again. Post your links below.

I was up early this morning to watch the wedding. It was 3 am my time. I got little miss up at around 4:30 when all the royalty started arriving. She was very excited and wanted to pop popcorn and watch the wedding. So that is what we did. She was out after the ring was on the finger. I stayed awake for the whole thing and I am still awake. Needless to say I am exhausted right now.

Tom Thumb Shopping

I went to Tom Thumb to just pick up some of the mega Q items for Q’s that I had to match. Little face likes to drive and always wants to drive my car. Tom Thumb has the carts that look like a car with a steering wheel and with the TV inside. He thinks he is really driving. He has a great time while we shop. I really enjoy shopping too; since he is occupied I can look at other items to see if there are any other deals. However, Tom Thumb usually has very high prices so I just go and get the sale items and leave. 
 

I have been trying to explain to people how I do this and many say they can’t run around to all the stores and get the items. So I am showing them to make a list of the items on sale and only get those items and leave. Depending on the sales you can probably do this in 15- 20 min with no kids. It takes me 30 min, but I am trying to occupy little face’s time. I plan my shopping trip Tuesday nights after I receive my flyer in the mail. Pull my coupons and make my list. I put all the coupons in an envelope with my list and go to the store. The only detour I may do is going through the produce to see if there are any sales.

Tom Thumb sends out the sales flyer on Tuesdays. If you live in the Dallas area, you will get them in your mailbox. This is why Tuesdays are one of my favorite days to get the mail. Usually I get the paper and review the sales and also look at their super Q’s. These are store Q’s and can be combined with a manufacturer Q to make a product even cheaper. This week I paired my Cheez IT store Q with a manufacturer Q to get the price down.

Here is how I did:

Walmart Shopping

I went shopping at Walmart today. It was an ordeal. I could have saved more, but they would not accept my 9 Qs for the Degree deodorant for a $1.00 off each. I was purchasing the trial size and planning on using my overage to go towards my food items. I got the assitant manager and he said the item has to be the item on the picture of the Q. I debated that it did not exclude trial size on the Q I was using. He stated it was not what the manufacturer intended. I was pretty ticked off today. Degree is the only deodorant I can use. I did get some other great deals though. They were out of other products I wanted so I will have to go back. I will try another Walmart store though.

Here are my results: 

Kroger Shopping

I took little miss to school and decided to try to snag some of those boxed Green Giant spinach at Kroger today. This will be my third time to go. If they didn’t have them I was going to get a rain check. We eat spinach all the time. I make spinach dip and I puree it and put it in other food dishes so the kids don’t know they are eating it. I also will make smoothies for my husband and me using spinach and cucumber. If you want to lose weight these shakes are great and you can’t taste the green stuff. They are packed with nutrients and very little calories, but they fill you up.

I also found some coupons for Birds Eye vegetables that I didn’t know I had until I saw it on another blog for a different store. I have decided when I get coupon books from other stores I am going to cut them up and put them in my coupon book. I could have used these last week, but I forgot about them. Instead of 33% off I could have made them 50% off. I am still learning and still making mistakes, but also I am getting better.

Tom Thumb Shopping

It’s LINK UP Friday. Here are my shopping results from Tom Thumb and my totals for the week. You can check out my Kroger trip and CVS trip earlier this week.  I didn’t have many manufacturer Q to match up for Tom Thumb; however, they did have some good sales with store Q’s I took advantage. I am also trying to establish my lowest price to pay for certain items. If you are new to couponing these are things you need to establish. I will be writing about those later next week. Check back for more tips.

Oops I forgot to take a picture.

Here are my results:

Kroger Shopping

I switched out some toys for little face for this trip and it helped wonders. He was so good while I was shopping this time. I even stopped and played a little with him in an aisle I didn't need to go down. We had a good time.

I went shopping at Kroger yesterday to get the last of some deals they had on food items I wanted. I am heading to Tom Thumb to do some more food shopping today. I will post those results tomorrow.

Here is how I did:

CVS Shopping

Apparently little face did not want to go shopping today. So I had to try to make it fun. I brought new toys this time hoping this would help change up the shopping. Needless to say this was a short shopping trip at CVS. I just picked up a few items and we checked out. I could have come out cheaper out of pocket, but I really did not feel like breaking up the transactions. I have more to spend next time I visit.

Here is how I did:

Kroger Shopping

I packed up little face for some Wednesday shopping. We had two stores to hit to get some great deals I was going to try to stay within budget this week. Sad to say again I did not make it by $10.00. I was trying to cut back to $40.00, since I spent so much on diapers last week. When I made the diaper purchase I had enough diapers to last for a month and it was a great deal. Check out my Target trip here.

This week we went to Sprouts and Kroger for our major grocery shopping. Sprouts is a small mostly organic and fresh food store. It is similar to Whole Foods just not as big. The prices on produce are almost as good as Aldi. And I enjoy shopping there better than shopping at Aldi.

Link up is below!

Here is how I did at Sprouts & Kroger:

Tom Thumb Shopping

Just read this log into Cellfire today to receive a coupon for $0.50 - $3.00 off your next Kroger shopping trip before noon Pacific Time. 
 

I went shopping on Tuesday to get a few things at Tom Thumb. Mainly I went to get the Kettle chips since they were on BOGO sale and I had a $1.00 coupon. So far this is my best price for chips. I have noticed with a lot of the blog sites I visit our prices are around $0.20 or so higher than everywhere else. I thought I was going to get them for $1.19 a bag. I get to the store and I start shopping only to realize I didn’t put the Kettle coupons in my envelope. I still had coupons for the Wesson and mustard, so I decided to shop and buy those things. My daughter had a school function that night, so I could come back after that and get those items plus I could pick up another Wesson and Mustard.

Here are my results:

Walmart Shopping

I had a great weekend this weekend with my daughter. We went on a Girl Scout camping trip. We spent Friday and Saturday at camp. It was more like a two night sleep over for the girls. They had fun and little sleep. We walked all over camp. I was so exhausted by the time we got home on Sunday. Whew! I took Monday off. :) I learned so much about Girl Scout traditions I never knew. I can't wait to go again next year.

Our Bunks

Dangerous Little Miss

 

Yeah I almost got a bullseye!

With all that, I have been really busy shopping this week. I have barely had time to write about it. Many great deals I can’t wait to share. I went to Walmart, Tom Thumb, Sprouts and Kroger. I will post all those later. Today I am starting with Walmart.

I have been having problems checking out at Walmart, since the cashiers don’t know about the new coupon policy as of yet. I meant to print it out and bring it with me this time but I forgot. I had a few items that were under the amount of the coupon and she had to go ask her manager about them. I also had to make sure she gave my overages because she was only going to give me the value of the item off. So I am printing a copy of the coupon policy and placing it in my Walmart envelope today. I purchased other non related food items at Walmart so I am just going to list the food items here.

Here is how I did:

Kroger Shopping

Today little face and I headed to Kroger to do the weekly shopping. I have a few staples I needed this week even though I don’t have coupons for them. I brought my coupon file this time to see if I could find any deals not advertised. I always have my phone ready to take pictures of items I might be interested in and compare them to Walmart prices. Some tags have and end date when the sale is going to end. Even though they are not mentioned in any ad, they may be on sale for a while. I have to say looking through my file while shopping is more difficult with little face. I have to concentrate and look for coupons and he gets frustrated I am not paying attention to him. But a song of ABC’s and itsy bitsy spider and that usually calms him down. It is called mommy multi-tasking!

I had quite a few good match ups this week and these were not posted on any website. They corresponded with the awesome Kroger eCoupons also to get an even bigger savings. I did go over my budget of $50.00 this week with my diaper purchase on Monday. Plus I bought a lot of meat this time at the store. So I will need to cut back the next couple of weeks to compensate for my overages.

Here is how I did:

Target Shopping

Monday was Money Making Monday for me. I was so excited. There is a site I visit to surf the web, participate in small surveys and watch short videos to get points. The points vary for each, but I got enough for a $5.00 Amazon gift card from Swagbucks.  You can just sign up and start earning points.

After getting $5.00 Amazon gift card, I headed over to Target to pick up some diapers. I had a $3.00 off Huggies and a $2.50 off Target coupon. I had two of each to combine with a coupon for a $5.00 gift card for buying two boxes of Huggies diapers. So I got $11.00 off Huggies diapers to make them around the same price as Walmart. Plus a $5.00 gift card.

CVS Shopping

Yesterday I needed coffee. The thunderstorms rolled in at 3:00 am in the morning. Which normally would just wake up the average person, but... we purchased a weather radio several years ago that makes a louder beeping noise than an alarm clock when it goes off. You can absolutely forget about going right back to sleep after that. It scares you have to death when you hear that sound and I sit up in bed to hear what it has to say. Fearing the worst, praying for the best. I kept getting up checking outside to see what size hail we were getting. Pea, marble, golf ball, quarter….. it depends on if you are using the money scale or the ball scale. It is not official which one to use.

We had a very busy Sunday needless to say. We went to church, then Brownies after that and a pizza birthday party after that. Even though I was super busy I managed to sneak in some CVS shopping between events. I took little miss with me to show her how I do this CVS shopping thing. She was very excited to see mommy in action. Also I saw two people there trying to decide what kind of toothpaste to by. I decided this is a learning opportunity and showed them if they bought the same brand, but the one over on the other shelf they could get money back through ECB’s and buy something else. And I showed them a few more items they may want to pick up that were on sale also.

Milk was on sale this week at CVS. I am so excited about this since I have a coupon for the brand of milk they sell at CVS. So this makes it as much as it is in the store. I didn’t have a plan, since I was just going in between events. My goal was try to get the milk for free or close to free.

Here is how I did:

Time Saving Tips

We all went to a crawfish boil yesterday. It was benefitting the LSU alumni associations’ scholarship fund. My husband went to LSU, I did not. We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather either. It was around 87 and breezy. I loved it. The crawfish were delicious and the kids had a great time. They all fell asleep in the car on the way home and we were pretty tired too.

Freebies

NEW LINK: FREE Sample Orville Redenbacher’s Pop Up Bowl

FREE Sample of Orville Redenbacher’s Pop Up Bowl, go to the Walmart FREE Sample Site to request your FREEBIE!! Allow up to 4 weeks for delivery!  Also, you can print a $1/1 Coupon.