How to Handle the Great Ho-Hum - This week's stockpile post

Blech. Nothing excites me this week. Even the coupon deals aren't making my heart go pitter-pat. I'm sticking with my Food City list I gave in my previous post, but I'm adding a few things:

Bashas has whole chickens for 49c/lb, limit 3. Buy 3. Go back and buy 3 more. I don't know how big the chickens are. I'll guess 4 or 5 pounds, so that's about 4 chickens for 10 bucks. That equals 8 dinners:

Slow cook the chicken whole the first day. Add a little water, onion, celery, etc. Save the resulting broth. On the second day, or maybe the third (have something else the evening in between) cook rice in the chicken broth. Add whatever leftover chicken meat there is to the dish. If you didn't season it heavily when you first made it, toss the chicken/rice mixture with a little Italian salad dressing.

I'm checking out a new store this week - The Pro Ranch Market. There are six locations in Phoenix. The stores on Thomas, Indian School and Camelback have better prices than the others. I'm hitting the Indian School store tomorrow to pick up tomatoes at 25c/lb and avocados 6 for $1. Also probably some bananas, because bananas taste good. I'm also intrigued by the Jamaica Hibiscus tea, sold as loose flowers by the pound. I'm on a diet, so I'm interested in making it iced with stevia as a treat.

OOPS! My bad. Pro Ranch Market runs it's ads from Wednesday to Tuesday as do most of the grocery stores. I was looking at an expiring ad last night. It's still worth a trip if you are somewhat nearby one in your travels because the really good Wednesday specials are bananas 3 lb/99c, carrots, 4 lb/99c and 10 lb bag of potatoes for 99c.

Otherwise, I'm going with Bountiful Baskets again this week. I'm getting more of the peaches and more of the gala apples. My dehydrator and slow cooker were my best friends this week. The apples came out so sweet, just like candy. I'm dehydrating some peaches overnight. I'll let you know how they came out. Otherwise, I used my slow cooker to make compote with allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon and just a little honey. So simple. Toss as many peaches as you can into the slow-cooker, stir it up, leave it alone for a few hours.

And no, I didn't peel the peaches. Or any apples. Believe me, if I have to start peeling stuff, I won't make it. I think everything came out just fine.

This year, I've decided not to buy fruit out of season, especially peaches. Peaches out of season are nasty. They rot instead of ripening and mostly taste like plastic.

I'm going to dehydrate some of the pears from Food City, also.

And here's a recipe to go with everything, courtesy of my friend, Tracy. This is from the Crockpot 365 blog. I think it looks really good, but I had to laugh at the end when the blog author said she wouldn't be making it again. If you try it, let me know how it came out. Chicken and apples and chicken and peaches would be good search terms for recipes this week.

Here's the recipe:

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/09/crockpot-chicken-with-gingered-peaches.html

Well, there ya go. Maybe not so ho-hum as I was thinking, just required a little more searching to find good deals. Those of you out in the Chandler/Mesa area should check out Superstition Ranch Market. My fellow couponers at CouponSense say it's a great place for produce out that way.