What's Cooking?

This weekend was a foray into making do with what you have on hand. On Saturday night the menu consisted of:

• Steak Fajitas-I had a London Broil in the freezer I had purchased for $1.50/lb and half a bottle of fajita marinade in the fridge. Throw in an onion and a green pepper and you're most of the way there. I cooked the meat on the grill after marinading it for most of the day. I sauteed the onion and green pepper on the stove using some left over marinade.
• Homemade Mexican Rice-I found this great recipe at the Red Velvet Cafe. It couldn't be more simple. Some rice ($8 for a 10 lb bag at Sam's Club), chicken stock and a can of Ro-Tel Tomatoes (around $1 regularly and $0.50 or better on sale) and you're in business. The only adjustment I made was to brown the uncooked rice in some olive oil before adding the liquid.
• Homemade Salsa-Never done this before because when Herdez Salsa is so good, why bother, right? Well, my vegetable basket from the co-op included a "Mexican pack" which consisted of tortillas, avocados, onions, jalapenos, tomatillos, limes, cilantro and some other peppers I could not conclusively identify. So I took the plunge. This is the recipe I used. Very easy and very good.

Dinner Sunday night was mostly courtesy of the freezer:

• Frozen cheese ravioli from the Treasure Box I picked up Saturday morning (more about Treasure Box in an upcoming post).
• Frozen Arrabiata sauce purchased at American Discount Foods. This place is like TJ Maxx for food. If a restaurant over-orders something or a food is discontinued or the can is imperfect, they send it here. You do have to inspect things carefully, but I have never been disappointed and the prices are the best. I bought gallon of this sauce (which tastes so good, it is clearly from a restaurant supply) for $2.49. It froze and defrosted beautifully.
• Frozen sausage-Now I would have been perfectly happy without meat in the sauce, but I bent to the palates of the men at the table and added some meat. This was actually the last of the homemade sausage from my Brother-in-Law's annual sausage making party. What? You don't have a BIL who hunts and loves to invite a boatload of people over to provide forced labor for his sausage-making party? Well, since the parting gift is a good-sized package of various types of sausage, I highly recommend you get one. More about this when it happens again in January.
• Salad from the veg in the co-op basket.
• Garlic toast (again from the freezer)

Both meals were met with compliments from the adults and some actual consumption by the kiddos. Success! I love it when I can make a meal (or meals) without going to the store for that one ingredient I don't have. The compliments were just the gravy, so to speak.

What a difference a day makes

So, you know how I said that coupons aren't exactly my thing. Well, that was before Fry's Foods started valuing all manufacturer's coupons as $1. So that piddly little $0.25 coupon you barely thought was worth the time to get up, find the scissors and cut out, is now worth a buck! Well at least for a limited time or at least a week, whichever ends first.

Now, if you, like me, do not have a large stockpile of coupons just waiting for an opportunity like this, don't fret. I have some suggestions. First off, you can go directly to many manufacturers' websites and find printable coupons, but an even better solution is to hop on over to Teri's website, The Grocery Game. At that page, she's got links to a ton of places where you can get printable coupons.

If you live in the East Valley (Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler), you may have found yourself the unsuspecting recipient of free copies of the East Valley Tribune thrown willy-nilly on to your driveway. Well, don't throw it out. Or at least, don't throw it out before you check to see if there are any coupon inserts in there. Coupons without having to subscribe to the newspaper? Sweet.

Where to Begin?

So, we all want to save money and for many families the food budget can be a black hole of spending. But the question is, what to do about it? I know that some people swear by coupon cutting, and I myself have saved a great deal of money using newspaper coupons. But I find that I am just not well organized enough to consistently save money using coupons from the newspaper--not to mention the fact that we don't subscribe to a newspaper.

I find that the easiest way to consistently save money is to scour the grocery store ads for significant savings, stock up on the biggies and plan your meals accordingly. If you have coupons to add on and the store has double or triple coupons, then great. But you can still save a bunch of money by just shopping according to the ads.

I live in Chandler, Arizona. So, I have included links to the weekly ads for the four major grocery store chains in our area (Albertsons, Bashas', Fry's Foods, Safeway) in the sidebar. I don't shop at each store every week, but there are times when I do, if an especially good sale is on.

I am thinking that a major feature of this blog will be to review each week's ads and call out the major items to you along with a recipe or two. Because without a recipe, you have a full pantry and still nothing to serve for dinner. It is Tuesday and the new ads are coming out tomorrow. So, check back tomorrow and see what you can save.

First Things

I don't have some strict, set-in-stone, philosophy when it comes to shopping, cooking and planning. More's the pity. But I do have some ingrained character traits that you should know about. In no particular order:

1. I hate paying full price for anything. I am not impressed by people who have the resources to do so. I am endlessly impressed by elegantly frugal people. You know, the ones who manage to live with abundance and frugality at the same time.
2. If any system or method of saving money takes more work than it saves, I won't keep up with it. I make a certain amount of money per hour, so I have a pretty good idea of what my time is worth. Even if you don't work for a paycheck, you know how much your time is worth. It makes no sense to spend hours to save pennies. With an 8-year old and a 2 year-old, I'd rather have the time.
3. I like to cook when I have a good idea for the meal, the ingredients on hand and the time to do so. When those things don't line up, I can still put dinner together to get everyone fed. But I wouldn't call it cooking.

There are probably still other things I could add to this list, but this is a good start. Do you have a similar list?

Bandwagon

Excuse me, is there room for one more on the bandwagon? As quite likely the last gal not to have her own blog, I wanted to get in before they shut this whole thing down. So, here I am. Now, let's see if I can actually keep up with it.