Thrifty Thursday: Travel and Save

Friday:  We started off on our journey today.  I packed lunch, breakfasts, snacks, coffee, and filters.  There were meal plans for most of the weekend already and I knew those meals were the ones we'd need to provide for ourselves. 

One way we 'saved' today wasn't just bringing our own food...It was the backroads we traveled.  There was no place to grab fast food or drinks until we'd been on the road for hours.  Glad I had packed food and drinks for us!

Our supper meal tonight was at a restaurant.  We'd been able to view the menu at home before we left and we both knew what we'd order and how much it would cost.  I had enough money in our entertainment fund for this past pay period to cover what we would spend.  Ditto for gas for the trip.  The money was literally in the bank.  We stuck to our plan.

Saturday:  We realized we were tired and having two events to attend today we decided we'd skip out on the evening plans and either pick up food at the grocery or get take-out and rest for the journey home tomorrow.

In light of the evening events with both John and I having our butts kicked by the beach sand, we chose to have food delivered.  We ordered and shared a salad and a small pizza which was more than enough.  

Sadly, I ran out of coffee this afternoon...I don't have enough for tomorrow morning, but we can get a cup somewhere.

Sunday:  John got coffee from the motel office.  I spilled mine in my purse.  Yes IN my purse.  I have a habit of putting things in my pocketbook when I can't hold everything.  I put the coffee in my Yeti but forgot to slide the magnet over the opening.  Before I figured out why my purse was warming my leg, I commented that my purse was getting hot, but it felt mighty good on that sore knee...Yeah.

John stopped to fill up with gasoline and went into the store to buy a large coffee.  He even remembered to bring me cream.  God bless this husband of mine! 

I urged John to stop at the grocery and let us pick up food for the trip home, but he was too intent on making that journey.  We stopped at McDonald's for both breakfast and lunch items.  Here's how we made that a savings thing: we each got a breakfast sandwich and shared a hash brown and orange juice but skipped other drinks.  At lunchtime we ordered double cheeseburgers, skipped the fries, and had chips we'd brought on the trip.  John wanted a milkshake, and I opted for a fountain drink.  I ordered the small sizes on both.  Here's where I could have saved money if I'd stopped to think before purchasing.  I had a cold soda in the food bag in the car!  I often get a cup of ice for free.  Oh well.

I had an entree in the fridge waiting to be reheated when we got home.  

Monday:  John called for jury selection today.  He told me last night he wouldn't eat lunch in town (there are plenty of places to eat and he could get something if he wanted but he didn't want to) so I made sure he had breakfast this morning.  He did find the local coffee shop open, so he went over and had coffee sitting at the cafe tables

I planned to go to the grocery today but I put it off.  Instead, I stayed home and cleaned and finished unpacking.  

I made myself lunch with things from the freezer and fridge (chicken potstickers, carrots, and broccoli).

I rummaged in the three meat baskets and pulled several older items to use up this week.  Tonight we had pork chops.  I won't share how old some of this meat was but I was shocked at some of the dates.  I'm glad I issued myself this challenge because there are still meats in those baskets that need to be used.

Last night for supper we had stuffed bell peppers with ground turkey and rice.  John and I were surprised because we'd eaten ground turkey several times while Katie was living here and none of us liked the texture or the taste but the bell peppers tasted good.  I have another pound of ground turkey in the freezer that I need to use and now I have a clue of how to make it a more pleasant meal.  

John has to go back to complete the jury selection tomorrow.  I went over my grocery lists tonight and picked out the items in this past week's sales that I wanted to take advantage of before sales change tomorrow.    I have coupons to use on several items on my list.  

I'm going to squeeze a visit to Mama into this trip as well, since the two stores I want to shop at have branches in her town.  

Tuesday:  John didn't want to eat breakfast but I got him to eat a bagel to t have something to run on until he could get home today.

I was able to do just what I'd planned for today.  I remembered to grab my ice packs from the freezer to put in my insulated bags.  It's not very hot yet but I thought I'd stop at a store on my way to her home.  I didn't, because Sam and Millie came by and delayed me a little from my original plan.  

At Publix today I kept it fairly simple:  I bought pineapple (8oz cans for $1 each).  I opted to get the chunk-cut pineapple because I knew I had plenty of cans of slices.  I also picked up four packages of the Caranbo frozen meatballs.  Do I normally buy meatballs?  Nope.  Why did I buy these today?  Because they were a buy one get one free item and that meant 2 pounds of meatballs cost $3 a pound.  I don't know about anyone else, but $3 a pound for meat is awesome these days.  I can use them as meatballs or combine them and make them into patties or scramble it.  It's just formed ground meat. I had not planned to buy strawberries but three pounds for $10 was a good price.  I often freeze berries when they are in season.  I bought 2  4oz. containers of cheese crumbles (1 blue, 1 feta) and 8 ounces of Jarlsberg cheese for under $8 for all three.  Then I stumbled upon John's favorite double-dipped chocolate-covered peanuts for $3 a bag.  

Hint:  I didn't tell John I'd bought the peanuts.  Right now he's happy with a bag of Hershey Kisses that I put out at Easter. And I just took a pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving out of the freezer so he has that. The peanuts can wait.  If John knew I had them, he'd eat them right away.  This is one advantage of shopping alone. I can buy 'future' treats while they are on sale.

What I skipped at Publix was half and half.  I knew that I could get a half-gallon jug at Kroger for the price of a quart of organic at Publix.  The Kroger brand is just milk and cream with no additives. While I have an allergy to Carrageenan, I've found that disodium phosphates have an unpleasant effect on me as well.  I can only buy organic at some stores and at others, like Kroger or Dollar General, the store brand is a good product.

I didn't stick to my list at Kroger, but the damage was lighter than it might have been had I walked the entire store as I tend to do.  Instead, I stuck to the areas I had planned to be in and picked up marked-down items I saw in those areas.  I got croissants and a half dozen glazed doughnuts off the clearance bread rack.  This Kroger has soy and almond milk, yogurt drinks, etc in the produce department.  I found two Bolthouse Farms yogurt drinks marked down to $1.30 each.  I'd planned to buy one Naked Fruit Mango smoothie but I saved money buying the two Bolthouse drinks.

Kroger sends out Best Customer coupons and I take advantage of them.  I had several coupons today that netted me quite a savings, some of which paid for an item, some of which earned me a little money.  I bought on-sale produce items.  18 ounces of Blueberries were $2.99.  I had a coupon that paid me $3.50 for buying them.  Grapes were $1.77/pound.  I had two coupons for grapes that took $3.10 off that price.  I got lettuce, cucumber, broccoli, mandarins, and bananas in the produce department.  I spent over $20 on produce and had another $5 coupon because of that.    I got boneless pork chops (5 pack) for $5.00. I bought four pounds of butter at $2.29 a pound with an e-coupon good for 70c. My 'extra' was a jug of orange juice and a Starbucks coffee drink.  I almost put cake and candy in the cart but realized I was simply thirsty (hence the two drink items) and skipped the sweet food items.  

When I got home today I added up my coupons from both stores, they totaled $16.  I also earned 10c on Ibotta.  I put the $16 into my Christmas savings account.  

Of the $220 I had budgeted to spend, I spent $135.  That total includes a 16-pound bag of cat food at $20.

Tempting as it was to pick up something for supper, or to use some of what I'd purchased today (meatballs sounded good!), I used what I'd thawed for supper tonight.  Our menu wasVenison Backstrap, Baked Potatoes, Asparagus, and Cheese Rolls.  The funny thing is this meal took only about 20 minutes from prep to cooking.  I put the potatoes in the microwave, cooked the asparagus and backstrap in the oven at 450F, and used the toaster oven to warm the rolls. 

Wednesday:  I broke down the package of bone in breasts today.  I boned all four breasts and removed the tenderloins.  Removing tenderloins is so darn easy.  It is a matter of just running your finger along the natural division and separating that piece of meat from the breast meat.  Once again, I'm wondering why am I paying for something I can easily do myself?  Both in removing the tenderloin and in boning and skinning the breast.  Bone-in, skin-on breasts are generally much less expensive than boneless breasts and certainly less than tenderloins which tend to be a premium breast cut. 

I boiled two portions of the breast with the bones and skin for chicken and dumplings and a small batch of chicken salad.  I picked over the bones once the breasts were done.  I plan to fry the rest of the meat for our meal tonight.    The tenderloins will be used in still another meal for the weekend.  I'll prepare that meal as I make supper tonight.

This evening, while I prepared our supper, I pulled meat from the bones and chopped the two breasts I'd cooked for broth. I chopped some of the meat and made a grape and chicken salad for tomorrow's lunch.  I decided to oven-fry the breasts and tenderloin.  Next time I'll probably fry unless I make up a breading mix that will crisp on the chicken.  The tenderloins took about 15 minutes total to cook.  I put the biscuits in the oven on the same pan as the meat when the meat was about 10 minutes from being done.  Our supper tonight was as planned.  Oven Fried Chicken, Mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, and biscuits.  I set half the biscuit dough aside for the dumplings tomorrow night and put a cup of the potatoes in the dumpling broth.  

I realized later that I'd almost prepared my supper for tomorrow night.  I just need to heat the broth and cook the dumplings.   The tenderloins will make a salad or a pizza this weekend.  

My other tasks included paying bills, keeping Millie, repairing Josh's jeans, and general housekeeping.  It was a full day albeit not a hard-working sort of day.

John went to take off the trash and pick up the mail this evening.  I sat right down and wrote out the checks for the bills that came in today's mail.  I have one more bill that should be coming in any day now.  I hope it isn't caught in the mail debacle we're experiencing.

Thursday:  I'm a little disappointed.  I bought two Bolthouse Farm yogurt smoothies at Kroger because they were marked down and the two were less than one bottle of the Naked Fruit Mango smoothie I wanted.  These peach yogurt drinks are too sweet! I looked on the label and they do have added sugar.  Now I need to determine how I can salvage this purpose.  Can I use it to make a frozen yogurt?  I don't know...But I don't want to do as John suggested and pour it out and be done with it.  

This morning, I sorted out the fridge.  I typically do it at the start of the week.  I found a portion of Shepherd's Pie that had fallen behind a basket.  I put the date on it when I placed it in the fridge.  It was March 27...Needless to say, that hit the trash.

I went out to feed the cat and dog and found my rose bush,  fully loaded with buds and about to be glorious in bloom, leaning crookedly out of the flower bed.  The zip ties that held the baby bed springs it was trellised to have broken.  I came right indoors and got a heavy-duty zip tie to put it back upright.

I am making bread today.  That's all I plan to do.  I'm very chill today and planned to take today as my 'free' day meaning I don't work on housework but instead concentrate on the computer work, writing, reading, wardrobe planning, and such that I want to get done.  This week has certainly flown by.  I've done little of the tasks I thought I'd accomplish (and even none in some areas) but that's the way it goes.  I've been steadily busy and have stuck to my monthly goal of trying to cut way back on computer time and do more.

That's our week.  How did yours go?  Did you find a new way to save, or learn a new skill?  Did you find a great bargain on something?  Please feel free to share in the comments.

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