Frugal Accomplishments

This past week was pretty frugal for us.  We ended up with one snow day, so I was able to work from home.  That day was nice because we were able to get some extra house work done also.  The weather has been a bit crazy, because later in the week, it was almost 65 and warm enough to take a really long walk with the family.

We're working on selling our Subaru because my father-in-law is selling his car to us.  It is in better shape, though just a year newer, and has four wheel drive, which we need.  He is selling it to us for a significant discount, so its definitely a step up for us.  We're hoping that the sale of the car will allow us to make a bit of money to pay for some staining/painting to be done in the spring.  (This is the kind of work that we can do, but Benny really doesn't like doing and its hard to carve out the time with two little ones.)

• Made all meals at home including tomato basil soup (we leave out the cream), meatball subs (we use leftover tomato basil soup as marinara) with oven fries, homemade pizza with veggies and pesto, crock pot black beans with rice, black bean dip with crostini, whole wheat waffles with blueberry pomegranate syrup (homemade), and blueberry muffins.
• Shared one meal with family of rice and beans.  We did use a Chipotle coupon to get free chips and dip to go with this meal.
• Gleaned several bags of Chex mix and Goldfish crackers from school, as well as yogurt and cheese sticks.
• Composted all kitchen scraps we could including brown paper bags and paper towels.
• Made a large pot of coffee and used it for cold coffee drinks for the rest of the week.  Flavored it with baking cocoa.  This saved on the cost of heating water multiple times and filters.
• Made a crock pot of turkey stock using a turkey carcass that we had in the freezer.  Will freeze some stock and use it for a meal this week.
• Made crostini from bread from the food pantry, making it free.
• Treated a sick dog over the phone with the vet, rather than taking her in.  She had some sort of stomach bug, but seems just fine now after a day or so of rice, beans, chicken, and chicken stock.  Hoping she won't turn up her nose at her kibbles now!
• Treated baby for pink eye over the phone using an existing prescription we had for eye drops.  Thankful that we caught it early and that the drops worked, saving a doctor visit copay and time waiting.
• Exercised at home using YouTube, saving on the expense of classes.  We also took a long walk one day, which was good exercise for all of us.
• Washed all laundry in cold water, except towels and diapers.  
• Hung all laundry to dry except towels.
• Used homemade cleaner to clean the bathroom and old washcloths as rags.
• Took advantage of Harris Teeter Super Doubles event to save on stocking up.  Spent about $30 and saved over $40.
• Meal planned for the rest of the month trying to take into account what we have on hand that needs to be used up.  This should save us overall this month.
• Called about getting funds directly deposited to the boys' 529 accounts.  Kind of got the run around, so will try to do this through our local bank after my check is deposited.
• Used existing supplies to make cookies and Valentines for little man's preschool class.  He helped bag them and make tags.
• Took the gifts from little man's birthday party (he asked for items to donate to the humane society in lieu of gifts) to the humane society.  He loved visiting with the dogs and cats!  It was a fabulous afternoon, and we hope to go back again soon.  (It was so nice to not do the gifts thing at the birthday party and just have it about having fun with friends.  We did do gifts at our family birthday dinner.)

What did you do to live and save green this past week?  I'd love to hear from you!

November Shopping and Meal Plan

This month is the month for us to stock up!  If you're into baking, it's prime time to build up that baker's pantry again and fill it with your favorite flours, brown sugar, and all the baking things you'll need for a joyous and yummy holiday.  For us, it is also the time for a big Costco trip and maybe a repeat order with San Francisco Herb Company, where we stock up on bulk spices, seeds, and herbal teas.

With travel plans this month, that can mean spending less on food because you're away from home and visiting family, or it can mean spending more because you're traveling.  For us, it's the former, which gives us some more wiggle room in the grocery budget to stock up.  If you're traveling, consider packing your own snacks (homemade roasted pumpkin seeds are an obvious choice) to save the frequent stops for fast food.

For our Costco list this month, we're stocking up on the basics:

• powdered sugar (we've price checked and it's cheaper than coupon prices)
• store brand dish washing liquid (we go through it making our own shower spray)
• chicken sausages (they don't have phosphates or nitrates, which means they're safe for baby #2)
• ketchup 
• frozen fruit for smoothies (we're slowly working through what we put up this spring/summer)
• block cheddar cheese
• dried beans
• frozen ravioli (a treat, but really convenient for nights when I'm tired and we need dinner quickly)
• maybe fresh fruit or carrots, depending on price
• sweet potatoes (we'll go through these in soups, sides, and love them in tacos)
• tortillas (hopefully whole wheat and/or organic)
• dried fruit (raisins, hopefully apricots)

Our grocery plan is to keep things to the bare minimum since we're stocking up at Costco.  We will restock our baking pantry this month, since things will be so much on sale.  I'll also stock up on cranberries to load in the freezer and for Thanksgiving, and probably some herbal teas and cocoa mix (though I'll make my own too) if they're on deep discount.  (They do make nice stocking stuffers.)  We'll get our organic milk and will probably pick up a few frozen veggies too (corn for corn chowder and maybe broccoli for broccoli cheddar soup)

For our menu plan this month, we'll make the most of the root veggies we have around, such as the last few beets from the CSA and potatoes and carrots.  Tis the season for the crockpot, so we'll put Mrs. Cleaver (thank you, Barbara Kingsolver, for that lovely crockpot name!) to work for cooking winter squash, baking potatoes and beets, and lovely soups and stews.  We'll also make leftovers into entirely new dishes; think turkey enchiladas, butternut squash and chickpea salad, sweet potato quesadillas, etc.

Breakfasts: oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts/seeds, egg and cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, breakfast burritos, winter squash muffins, zucchini and flax muffins, winter squash pancakes/waffles, smoothies

Lunches:  leftovers of course, tuna or egg salad sandwiches, quesadillas

Dinners:  

Soups/stews:  lentil and sweet potato soup, potato soup, corn chowder, broccoli cheddar soup, winter squash black bean chili  (all served with homemade bread and/or veggie side such as carrot sticks), turkey and wild rice soup

Crockpot:  loaded baked potatoes, sausage w/ peppers and onions on noodles or bread, roasted root veggies

Stovetop meals:  veggie stir fry, breakfast for dinner (usually eggs, smoothies, and some sort of bread), waffles with fruit, chicken sausages with cabbage, apples, and cranberries, quesadillas, turkey and bean enchiladas, leftover turkey with orange glazed carrots and rice pilaf, veggie pesto pizza, ravioli with homemade pesto and roasted root veggies

Snacks:  roasted pumpkin/squash seeds, dried fruit, sliced apples, carrot sticks and dip, popcorn, homemade muffins/oatmeal & whole grain cookies

How is your November shaping up?  I'd love to hear your plans for living and saving green in this holiday season!

April Menu, Baking, and Stocking Up

April is a month for making use of all sorts of spring time foods.  With Easter this month, there are great deals at the grocery store on eggs, asparagus, ham, and strawberries are starting to show up here.

Around our house this month, we're working to eat up last year's produce that's still in the freezer to make room for more goodies.  We know we'll be seeing the trucks bringing strawberries from "off the mountain" soon, and we want to have plenty of freezer room for those and other goodies once our CSA starts again.

I'm also working to do some baking for the freezer to make the summer months a little easier.  Summer tends to be a little looser in some regards, busier in others.  We have more time for playing outside, picking berries, etc., but tend to want to spend less time in the kitchen.  So, I'll be baking up bread, pound cakes, muffins, etc. now to make summer months easier and cooler (not having to heat the oven in June and July as much).

I also scored an awesome deal on jalapenos at HT on the discount produce rack, so I'll be processing those to can.  These will be wonderful to have next winter, and they make a great addition to other homemade goodies for Christmas gifts.  (The time to think about canning for Christmas is spring and summer!  But it makes Christmas so much less stressful.)

Here's our menu plan for the month to make use of our springtime goodies and freezer stores.

Breakfasts:  banana nut muffins, french bread and rosemary olive oil bread from The Prudent Homemaker, lemon poppy seed muffins, winter squash pancakes, egg and cheese sandwiches, bagels from Panera (with gift card money), baked oatmeal, and marmalade muffins.  I will post the winter squash pancake recipe soon.

Lunches:  leftovers filled in with egg salad sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, three bean salad, or seasonal fruit

Dinners:  ham and asparagus quiche, baked potatoes with cheese and broccoli, corn chowder, these yummy egg sandwiches, pasta with pesto and ricotta (cheater's lasagna), homemade pizza with veggies and ham, roasted asparagus with salmon and baked potatoes or oven fries, bean and cheese quesadillas, vegetarian chili over rice or baked potatoes, black bean tacos, dinner salads with hard boiled eggs and tuna, and maybe a turkey pot pie to use up the last of the turkey in the freezer.

What about you?  I'd love to hear your plans for how to use those deals on Easter groceries!  Blessings to all this Easter weekend!

I'll be linking up to The Prudent Homemaker and Strangers and Pilgrims this week.

Rock Whatcha Got January

Well, we made it through the holidays with only a few extra pounds and lots of chocolate on hand to show for it. Today is all about taking down the Christmas decorations and trying to get the house back in order from the chaos that is the holidays and moving my mom into her new house. Things are still in transition somewhat upstairs, as we totally convert what was once the office to the nursery and make the guest room an office also. But we're getting there...

On to today's topic. It's January again, which means it's a long month for teachers in NC since we get paid prior to Christmas break but don't get our next paycheck until the end of January. It's even more stretched around here as Benny's on winter hours at the store, but we always make it work, and are totally grateful to have the abundance that we do so that it's not always such a shock.

For the grocery budget, we try to only purchase the things we really need, not the wants this month. This is made easier by the fact that we almost always get some fun pantry items in our stockings at Christmas (nuts, specialty dried fruits, coffee, herbal teas and sometimes a grocery store card or two). I totally get that nuts and dried fruit may not do it for everyone, but for those of us who love to cook and bake, they're the staples of winter breakfast muffins and salad toppings. We also try to make sure the the freezer is already stocked with butter, frozen veggies from the CSA or garden this past summer, and meats. (Butter and meats almost always go on sale around holiday time, so we stock up then.) We always snag the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving or Christmas to make stock and soup (we've discovered most people in our family don't want to mess with this step). And of course, we always have dried beans, lentils, rice, barley, and pasta on hand in the pantry to make meals come together quickly.

So, for this month, here's the rough breakdown of menu items:

Soups: smoked turkey and wild rice soup, potato and veggie chowder, split pea soup, chili verde with sweet potato fries, black bean soup, chili con carne, corn chowder, barley and lenil soup

Mexican meals: smoked turkey and winter squash tacos, sweet potato quesadillas, black bean nachos, chicken tortilla soup

Asian meals: egg and veggie fried rice, spicy Thai noodle dish with linguini

Family go-to meals: pecan crusted chicken with baked potatoes, quiche with bacon, sun dried tomatoes, and onion, beef and cheddar pie, whole wheat waffles with frozen fruit syrup and nuts, jambalaya, pasta with pesto or tomato sauce

Side items: mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, okra corn bread, homemade whole wheat yeast rolls or bread, winter greens salad with dried fruit or citrus, braised cabbage

Breakfasts: muffins/scones with dried fruit and nuts, homemade bread with homemade jam from summer fruits, oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts, cereal

Lunches around here are always leftovers. When we're done with fixing a dinner, we portion out the meal into lunch size containers so they're easy to grab and put in a lunch box for the next day. We never buy specialty lunch items from the frozen section, but do occasionally purchase granola bars or individual yogurt cups to help round out lunches or provide an afternoon snack. (Of course these are always purchased with coupons and on sale to make a buck go further.)

So, for the most the only items we need to purchase this month are the occasional fresh produce (we like to have grapefruit on hand for breakfasts and there are always a few veggies we don't have stockpiled in the freezer), cheese (watch for sales and coupons and freeze it if it's going in a casserole or soup where it'll be melted), milk, flour, and eggs. And we'll go to HT this week to get some other staples (cereal, yogurt, etc.) because it's super doubles with coupons.

We also really try during this month to not buy things that are wants, but just needs in other areas of our lives. For instance, the car registration info and bill just arrived for my car--definite need. But the cute Christmas stuff that's 75% off at Michaels right now, not so much. I know that I have enough Christmas wrapping supplies to get us through next year, so there's no point in stocking up now. This is generally our strategy with lots of stuff throughout the year, but we really try during January to cinch the belt a little tighter to make things stretch.

The quote "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," has really become our
mantra as we try to live frugally so that we can truly live green and save green. It means finding things in the basement that we can revamp with paint for the nursery rather than buying new (picture frames, lamps, furniture), reupholstering the old chair rather than buying a new one, making do with the cars we have and repairing them rather than purchasing a new one, and on and on it goes. And, in the end, it makes us feel good to know that we're not sending something to the landfill or junkyard (though we always try to donate things first if we really can't use them anymore). It also allows us to be more generous with our charitable giving, which means a great deal to us.

So, how are you living and saving green in the days after the holiday season? I'd love to hear from you!

Lovin' Super Doubles

Did anyone else get some major deals at the good ol' HT over Super Doubles this past weekend? (For those not in the know, Harris Teeter occasionally does super double coupons, which means that those $1 and $1.50 off coupons actually end up being $2 and $3 off.)

We did our major shopping run on Saturday morning bright and early to miss the crowds and hopefully get most of what was on our list. It would have been great to go on Wednesday when the promo started, but that just wasn't in the cards with Benny being out of town and a crazy school schedule for me last week. (Love seeing my students play basketball, but it makes for crazy long days.) Of course, we used our Grocery Game list, which we printed and prepped on Friday night. Such a romantic date night, I know...

Here are a few of the deals we scored:

Free Items-- salad dressing, boxed potatoes (for the local food pantry), cough drops, 16 cups of yogurt, canned biscuits (they make a great quick pot pie)

Less than $1-- bacon bits, pizza sauce (two cents!), pasta, juice, crackers, muffin mix, toothpaste, crescent rolls, frozen veggies (ten cents per box--we got six)

Most other items on our list were somewhere between $1 and $2. There were a few things we bought without coupons, like produce, but there we shopped specials.

Our total.... drum roll please.... for over $110 worth of groceries, we paid just $39.90, a savings of almost $78.00! Recently, we discovered the eVIC coupons, which you can find online when you sign into your eVIC account. These are electronic coupons, so they aren't doubled, but they're tied to your VIC card, which means you don't have to clip them. They will allow you to compound these with regular printed manufacturer's coupons, so we did this with a few items, like the veggies, yogurt, and granola bars.

There are all sorts of coupon/savings sites out there, but most of my favs are in my list here. You can also check out my previous posts on couponing, if you've got questions, or feel free to leave a comment. By shopping coupons, sales, and planning our meals for the month, we've drastically cut our grocery budget beyond what I had thought was possible, even with sticking to our values of buying organic and local when possible. I hope that this is some encouragement for you to do the same, while not compromising your family's health or values.

Happy savings! I'd love to hear from you! :)

Couponing Deals at HT and a dent in the freezer

This past week, we had some fabulous grocery shopping deals at Harris Teeter, thanks to Super Doubles (where they double coupons up to $1.98 value, meaning that your $1.50 coupon now gets you $3 off). We ended up going twice, since the HT coupon policy states that you can only double 20 coupons per day (24 hour period).

Some of the deals we scored were $0.13 cartons of yogurt, $0.80 for a dozen eggs, free refrigerated cinnamon rolls, and $1.14 bags of Craisin trail mix. We were also able to stock up on some free rice and cheap name brand flour for the baking season ahead. All in all, I think this week's grocery savings were about 65% off the retail price... not too shabby!

Later this week, I found a $4 coupon for Wholly Guacamole, which meant that it was free. So, we made a run to HT today while we were doing our other errands (which included a free drink and sandwich at Chick-Fil-A, thanks to coupons) to pick that up. Benny found a peelie coupon on one of the Wholly products, but the store didn't have the free item on the coupon in stock, so we just got the guacamole. It will be tasty with the black beans, cheese, and sour cream we already have to load into a tortilla.

This week, we also managed to whittle down some of the freezer stash. We cooked some chicken in the crock pot for quick casseroles and stock, and then made some turkey soup with leftover turkey pieces we had saved in the freezer. It came together quickly with the free rice we had, the seasoning package from the rice, and some chopped celery, onion, and carrot. Tonight, we're going to make some homemade mac and cheese with broccoli stirred in, so that will free up a little more freezer space.

Recently, I found this post on The Frugal Find about couponing. It's a very well done video tutorial and has challenged me to tackle the drug store couponing game once again. I hope you find it helpful as well.

Did anyone else have a fabulous run with HT super doubles? I'd love to hear about it!

October Menu Planning

So, I finally sat down this weekend to plan out our October menu. As usual, there's always a little wiggle room and flexibility as new ingredients pop up unexpectedly (such as a share in a friend's CSA if they're out of town that week) or we just run out of steam one evening and use the go-to frozen pizza or 15 minute pasta meal. Here's the plan for the month:

Week 1: supper club meal (turned out to be shepard's pie made with venison... yumm), beef and cheddar pie, acorn squash chili

Week 2: barbecue chicken and black bean burritos (recipe from Cheap. Fast. Good!), crockpot vegetable soup (with homemade stock and frozen garden veggies from the summer), fruit and yogurt salad for lunches/breakfast, roasted butternut squash with sausage and apple stuffing (recipe from Joy of Cooking)

Week 3: French Toast Casserole (to make use of more berries from the freezer), sausages on buns (sausages were on sale at HT), perogies (free from a friend) with canned tomatoes, supper club meal

Week 4: Sausage and wild rice casserole (mom's recipe), chili with sausage and beans

We're using batch cooking several times this month. I cooked a pack of chicken thighs in the crockpot today, so we'll have the meat for the burritos and the stock for soups later in the month. The beans are easy to fix in the crock pot and freeze in one and two cup portions so they're easy to put into any meal. We'll also make some flexible Mexican filling (also from Cheap. Fast. Good!), since the farmer's market will close at the end of the month, we want to stock up on local beef for this recipe before then.

Breakfasts will be toast from homemade bread or homemade muffins that I make in the evenings or weekends to have throughout the week. Lunches are always leftovers, with yogurt, crackers, or granola bars to round things out. (We try to eat the more European way with a larger lunch and lighter dinners... it means we have longer to burn off the calories and we've got more energy to get us through an afternoon at work.)

We've done really well sticking to our $100-$150 a month grocery budget, although we went a little over last month to stock up on essentials and restock spices and baking products. This month, we're really going to work out of the freezer and do more to use up stuff that's stockpiled in the pantry and basement. Couponing has really helped, as has the grocery game. (If you decide to sign up, let me know! If you put me in as the person who referred you, I can earn a free month. :))

How's your monthly menu planning going? Have you found new coupon tips and tricks somewhere? I'd love to hear from you!

September Meal Plan

So, this post is a bit belated, but I thought you might like to know how I go about making a meal plan for the month and what this month looks like for us. (I'm giving myself a break from National Boards reading for a few minutes, so I'm rewarding myself with a blog post... Benny would say it's more work, but I love it! :))

To make our meal plan, I first assess what we currently have on hand in the freezer, pantry, and fridge. Then I add the essentials to the grocery list (this month, it was cheese, milk, flour, and some seasonal veggies from friends and the farmer's market). The rest of the grocery list is built every week or two based on the Grocery Game list. This helps me to determine the plan for the month.

This month, I knew we had sausage in the freezer that we could use in chili and casseroles. We also had tomato sauce in the pantry, dried pasta, and the basics for bread in the machine. So, here's the breakdown for the month, based on the basics we had on hand, plus produce and additions from the Grocery Game list.

Week 1: chili and rice (use the crockpot to cook the chili and use free tomatoes and jalapenos from friends, dried beans that were cooked and frozen in portions, and a bottle of old beer); sausages on homemade buns with sauted cabbage, onions, and apples as relish; broccoli salad, applesauce, and homemade cookies as sides--if additional meals are needed, fill in with pasta and sausage pizza

Week 2: meal from supper club (this week it was a pineapple salsa chicken casserole), sausage casserole, and homemade pizza (bacon, veggies, and fresh herbs); sides are stewed apples (done in the crockpot) and yogurt purchased with coupons

Week 3: pasta e fagiole soup (using pantry pasta, canned tomatoes purchased with coupons, and beans cooked and frozen in batches); Mexican chicken pizza (homemade crust, chicken thighs cooked in crockpot and meat shredded, salsa as sauce, and cheddar cheese); french toast casserole with frozen fruit (free blackberries and local blueberries)

Week 4: supper club meal; stir fry with spicy Asian sauce over linguini; homemade pizza

For breakfasts, we generally either eat cereal (purchased with coupons for about $1 a box) or toast with homemade jam or cream cheese. Breakfast breads for this month include: beer bread, banana bread, apple cinnamon bread, and berry muffins. All of these are made from scratch using the bread machine or a good blending fork. Generally, we make breads on the weekend so we're around to pull them out of the bread machine. Almost all of our bread recipes come from Bread Machine Magic, though the beer bread recipe comes from Better Homes and Gardens Best Bread Machine Recipes.

Snacks and fillers for lunches include: yogurt, homemade cookies or brownies, crackers (store bought with coupons for about $1-$1.50 a box), or popcorn.

Our lunches are always leftovers from dinner, and we frequently pack up lunch portions after cooking the main dish to store them in the fridge. This makes packing lunches in the morning a breeze, since the meal is already packaged to go in the lunchbox and is in microwave ready containers for work.

I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea of how we go about planning for the month. Of course, sometimes things are a bit flexible... if I find a new recipe that I want to try and have things on hand to make it, then I'll substitute it for something else in the plan. Sides are always a bit flexible, and we try to do a lot of one dish meals, so that we don't have to fix a ton of sides. (That's why you see so many soups, casseroles, pizzas, etc.)

Here's to budget friendly cooking and saving on the energy bill by using the crockpot and microwave as much as possible for your meal prep! If you have questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you!

Harris Teeter Super Doubles

Just a quick post to let you know that this week is super double coupons at HT. That means that they will double coupons with a value of up to $1.98, so your $1 off coupon magically becomes $2 off. How cool is that? I know where I'll be on Friday after date night... the freezer section of HT, stocking up on Ben and Jerry's!

If you do the Grocery Game, the new list should be posted on Friday for HT. Happy shopping... and saving!

Coupon Party

This week I had the opportunity to attend a coupon party. Even though my week was crazy busy, I decided to go since I'd been wanting to check one out for a while. Here's the low down...

First, gather all coupons you're not going to use, as well as your coupon organizer and a pair of scissors. These are essential to making the most of the coupon party.

When I arrived at our coupon party, there was a stack of coupon flyers in the middle of the table that was up for grabs. Pretty much, we just sorted through and picked out what we wanted. I also found it helpful to let others know if I was looking for something in particular (yogurt coupons), so that if they found one they weren't going to use, they could pass it along to me. When couponing, it helps if you're not brand specific, so that you can make the most of the coupon good-ness. However, if you are, the coupon party is a great way to accumulate doubles or triples of things your family likes. (It saves you from having to buy an additional paper each week.) We were able to stock up on Yoplait coupons, as well as Pepperidge Farm cookie coupons (woohoo), among other things. I also found this to be a nice way to get a hold of some coupons I hadn't seen, since we get the Winston Salem Journal, while others get the Charlotte Observer.

The coupon party was a great way to get tips from others on their couponing methods, such as the Grocery Game and Southern Savers. It was also neat to see how other people organized their coupons. One person used a small photo album, another the baseball card holders, another just a binder with sheet protectors with the inserts in chronological order. For more on my couponing methods, check out this post, and those tagged with "coupons". I also found out about some great local deals, like "friending" Stick Boy on Facebook for daily and weekly deals. Too bad I missed out on the free cookie and coffee this week there! We also gathered up expired coupons to send to troops, who can use them on the bases for up to six months after the expiration date. I also shared that the Watauga Humane Society takes animal food coupons, so that's another way to share the wealth.

Probably the best thing about the coupon party was the chance to meet others in the community who are like-minded about savings. It was a nice way to meet some new moms, other gals who don't have kids yet, and get to share some dessert and grocery savings strategies. So, kudos to Amanda for organizing the coupon party this month! I'm hoping that I can attend again next month.

Have you found a local coupon party to attend? Maybe you can start your own to learn more from others, and at the very least, enjoy some social girl time. Here's to living and saving green, the party way!

Squeezing the Grocery Budget

We've always tried to be very thrifty with our grocery budget by making the most of coupons, sales, and discounts. This month, after assessing our overall budget and meeting last month with our financial planner, we decided that we would do everything we could to stick to our $150/month grocery budget. Here's how things went down...

The first two weeks of the month, we spent the bulk of our monthly budget, approximately $100. Primarily, this went to restocking the pantry, purchasing staples such as onions, potatoes, milk, and eggs (from our friends at Faith Mountain Farms). We also restocked the freezer with discounted meat, especially sausages, which were reduced for quick sale since they were getting ready to go out of date. We found some fantastic blueberry chicken sausages, as well as portabello mushroom chicken sausages, in the natural/organic section that were two and three dollars off the regular price and some were already on sale. We also found some of our favorite wine on sale at HT, which was an even better buy since they were doing 15% off a half case. So, that splurge was also calculated into the monthly grocery budget.

The next few weeks, we purchased only the essentials... milk, eggs (we go through about a dozen a week, especially since we like to have omelets for breakfast on Saturday), cheese, and sometimes fruit. We are blessed to have fresh herbs here at home, as well as friends who bring us lots of produce (zucchini, squash, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, etc.), and we know how to make use of local apple trees that others don't pick. I made two huge batches of applesauce from apples here at home and those I picked at school to stock the freezer and fill out our breakfasts and lunches. These weeks, we only spent about $15-$20 on groceries, if that.

The last week of the month is always the stretching point, but I think we did pretty well. I made a crock pot of beans (pintos and shelly beans, both given to us), seasoned with dried onion, garlic, cumin, diced jalapeno, and some chopped carrot just because we had it and I thought it would be a nice addition. We had beans on orzo for a few days, froze some for chili later this fall, and will make some into refried beans. Wednesday night we had dinner with some friends, so we just had to bring dessert... blackberry and apple cobbler to the rescue! The blackberries were from the freezer (free--we picked them earlier this summer), and the apples were canned by Benny's aunt and had been hanging out in the pantry waiting for just such a use. Friday night, we had steamed shrimp (a customer gave Benny a pound of fresh shrimp from his trip to the beach that he had frozen for us), homemade blueberry muffins (I substituted applesauce for the oil to use what we had in the fridge), and a sliced homegrown tomato. I also found a few cucumbers hanging out in our garden (the deer must have decided they weren't worth it), so we sliced those up with some vinegar for a little extra side. Dinner last night was with friends, so we just had to bring an appetizer (breadsticks from scratch--thank you bread machine--with tomato sauce from the freezer), and we took the stuff for homemade icecream (it pays to buy dairy in bulk). Tonight, we had pancakes, sausage, and applesauce. I prefer blueberries in my pancakes, so I added those, and I made some quick-and-dirty blueberry syrup by heating some blueberry jam in the microwave. We've got quinoa "hash" for lunch tomorrow with turkey kielbasa and brussel sprouts (thank you frozen veggies at 50 cents a pouch with coupons).

So, all in all, even with our splurges, more expensive local eggs and organic milk, we were able to stick to our $150 grocery budget without too much pain at all. Of course, the Grocery Game helped, along with triple coupons one week, and knowing how to shop a sale at the meat counter. We're always grateful for the kindness of friends who share out of their garden abundance, and we try to return that favor as much as possible (homemade applesauce or fresh herbs, anyone?).

The ultimate goal of this penny pinching is to beef up our savings account, as well as to tackle a few more home improvement projects before winter (hello gas logs!). So, what about you? What's your strategy for making your dreams happen? How are you saving a penny in order to earn one somewhere else? I'd love to hear from you!

Green Groceries on a Budget

So, I realized that I forgot to fill you in on our awesome grocery adventure this past Saturday.

As I've mentioned before, we use the Grocery Game, which helps us tremendously in matching up sales and coupons. This allows us to save the most, while still getting the products we need. The Grocery Game tracks the store sales, which are typically cyclical (they run in trends of about 8-12 weeks), so we have to stockpile a little in order to have what we need when we need it and save the most.

This past weekend was Super Double Coupons at Harris Teeter, so that means that they doubled coupons up to $1.98, not just their general doubling of $0.99 coupons. So, we hauled our our coupons that were over 99 cents and looked at the list and laid out our plans for the trip. We mostly bought things that were on the list, but there were a few things, like pistachios (they've been a great healthy snack this week) and Seventh Generation products (like toilet paper) that we had coupons for that we printed off the internet or had from other sources that weren't in the list. So, we used those too, knowing that we'd still get a pretty good savings. The extra savings we had from super doubled coupons allowed us to purchase the organic products that we wanted for the week, like milk and some organic produce.

Speaking of organic, here's my basic philosophy on organic produce... it's worth buying organic when you can for the veggies/fruits you're not going to peel. So, I'll spring for organic cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, berries (but not once we have our raspberries and blueberries planted), etc. because they're most likely to have herbicide/pesticide residues on them that won't wash off completely. However, I don't buy organic citrus fruits, onions, bananas, etc. because the area that has the most of these chemicals is coming off anyway. With milk, I try to buy organic because I don't like the idea of all the hormones that the cows are fed/injected with leeching into my milk.

So, back to the savings. Because of the Grocery Game list, we were able to get five boxes of whole grain pasta for 60 cents each. (All the pastas of that brand were on sale, buy two get three free, but we opted for the whole grain--which we finally found way down on the bottom shelf.) We also bought a TON of yogurt (Yoplait--not organic, bummer on that, but it's really good) because with our coupons that we'd stocked up on, it was 37 cents a carton, over half of the original price. We were missing a few coupons on the list, because we'd missed getting a paper that week (by the way, the cheapest Sunday paper in Boone is at the Dollar Tree, but they go fast, so we get ours before church if we can), so we missed out on a few good freebies. We were able to score some Seventh Generation baby wipes for about half the original price with our online coupon.

All in all, even with our organic purchases and produce that wasn't on the GG list, we were able to save over $60 and spent around $58. A little over 50% savings wasn't too bad, I don't think... although there have been weeks we've seen a 70% savings.

So, what about you? What are your great savings stories? Where do you find the best deals? Please dish... you know how we love a great deal!

Sharin' the green love and savings!