Oh My Goodness! HALLOWEEN!!

When did my kids become such social butterflies? Seems all I'm doing is dealing in costumes and parties and errands. This is a great week for those who coupon. The deals are amazing. Here's a way to take advantage if you're just thinking about couponing:

Check the ads from yesterday's paper. There's a $3 off $30 coupon in there on the Fresh and Easy ad. Fry's is accepting competitor coupons this week, so if you take advantage of their Mega Event, even if you aren't using coupons, you can get $3 off your purchase of $30 worth of food. Also, Albertson's has a $10 off $100 coupon. Same deal.

This is a quick post:

Other deals at Fry's:

1. Pork Spareribs - 97c/lb
2. New York Strip Steaks, bone-in - $3.77/lb
3. Milk is $1.47/gallon

Moonlight Madness at Fry's today. 3 pm to 9 pm. If you're not there early, the deals will be GONE. I learned this last year. No rainchecks will be given. Good deals on apples and candy. Check the Fry's Ad.

Reasons to go to Safeway:

1. London Broil is $1.77/lb. Have the butcher grind some of it for very lean ground beef.
2. Shop before 10/31, you can buy Lucerne Ice Cream for $1.99 1.75 quarts with their 'Spooky Savings' Promo
3. Spend at least $20, you can use Safeway In-Ad coupons to purchase:

• Safeway Apple Juice - 88c
• Fritos - 88c
  

Good deals at Albertsons:

1. Whole chickens - 48c/lb - limit4
2. Bananas - 39c/lb
3. John Morrell Weiners 49c (use in-ad coupon)
4. and a $10 off $100 purchase.

Reasons to check out Bashas:

1. Bashas Sour Cream or Cottage Cheese, 16 oz - 99c (first 4)
2. Honeycrisp apples - 87c/lb - AWESOME price for honeycrisps

• Heh. I see apples and cottage cheese together and I'm happy. I had it for breakfast this morning.

3. The Sunsations brand dish liquid is 99c/25 oz - that's a really good price. I use dish liquid for all kind of cleaning - floors, bathrooms, kitchen...even spot cleaning on the rug. I add a little vinegar to the water. It does a great job and is a lot cheaper than most commercial cleaners. If you're not sure about a surface, test an inconspicuous spot first.

Halloween Party at Basha's on Saturday!!

They have a 'Decorate Your Own' Jack-O-Lantern Cake for $5. Looks like fun. Also free cookies and cider. Another chance for the kids to wear their costumes. Go and support our hometown grocer!

Sunflower has pears 25c/lb! Doesn't a softly cooked pear over rice pudding sound good?

Also, they have Fuyu Persimmons for 50c/each. If you've never had a persimmon, now is the time to try them. They're good. Let them ripen to soft and eat like an apple, or slice to serve.

Gotta go! Hopefully next week will be less hectic!

Why you should stop reading this and...

...go to El Rancho Market immediately:

See previous post for addresses for the two locations. Sorry, no website yet, I asked at the store, but boy are they serious about customer service!! I filled out a card with my name and address so they can mail me their ad every week.

Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts are $1.47/lb
Bananas are 4 lbs/99c
tomatoes are 3 lbs/99c (if you missed the screaming deal at Pro's Ranch yesterday)
Carrots are 25c for 1-lb bag
Onions are 5 lbs/99c
Iceberg lettuce is 33c/head.

Also, on the side of the ad are coupons good for today only:

64 oz Sunland Orange Juice - 99c - first 1
Food Club MaC and Cheese 33c - first 6
8 oz Food Club Shredded Cheese - 88c first 4
24 oz loaf IGA white or wheat sandwich bread - 69c first 4
Farmland Link Sausage - 50c, first 4
Tyson Bacon - $1.88, first 2

(MINIMUM $10 Purchase REQUIRED)

I was interested in the OJ, shredded cheese, bread and sausage. They were out of sausages, but cheerfully handed me a raincheck and advised me to keep it with the receipt and show that when I redeemed it.

I did not buy the chicken (though it is a terrific price) because I have so much chicken already, my freezer is clucking. Instead, I purchased $10 worth of goat meat ($1.79/lb) to make my own version of Birria.

The link isn't my own version of Birria, it's a recipe for authentic Birria. I'm marinating the meat in lemon juice and pico de gallo for a day or two, then will slow cook until the meat is mouth-watering tender.

I digress.

El Rancho Market, like Food City and Pro's Ranch Market, has special sales on different days of the week - Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The Thursday coupon specifically states the $10 purchase does not include the coupon items. The checkers are on top of that and will cheerfully offer to set your coupon purchases to the side until you find another 10 bucks worth to get the coupon prices. There were a couple of young guys who had me chuckling. Their basket contained only the coupon specials and a case of beer.

I'll post again with regular stockpiling.

BTW, if you're still on the 'Should I Coupon?' Fence - today I picked up 20 cans of Campbell's soup - tomato and chicken noodle and 2 jars of Ragu (the cheesy alfredo white ones). Without coupons, the sale price would have been $12.34, still good, but not near as good as the $5.34 which I paid. Took me a minute to check the CouponSense database. Another to cut the coupons. I hit the store on my way while doing other commuting. Seven bucks for 2 minutes of my time. Pretty good return on my investment.

I mean - who doesn't need to keep a few cans of soup and a couple of jars of pasta sauce on hand?

If you sign up, please use my referral code 1707971 and ask for Mindy C****** as your instructor.

Here's what I bought at Pro Ranch Market Today!!

I'll be back later for a better stockpile post, but I don't want anybody to miss out on these deals if they are anywhere near a Pro Ranch Market.

3 1 lb bags carrot
14 large onions - 7.16 lbs
2 enormous cabbages
8 kiwis (the fruit, not the people)
8 piloncillo (I have to look up what they are again, but I remembered when I saw them that I'd looked them up before and decided I'd buy them when they were on sale again. Well, they're on sale again. Look like a brown sugar thing.)
2 pretty large pumpkins, about 15 pounds each - 16c/lb. So well under 5 bucks for the two. This is the cheapest I've seen anywhere so far.
2.76 lbs Red Yams - The color on these was extraordinary. Simply extraordinary.
5 cucumbers
10 lb bag of russet potatoes - 89c/bag
9.61 lbs tomatoes
7.77 lbs bananas

Grand Total - $16.82

I LOVE THAT STORE.

I found the carrots cheaper at El Rancho Market at 8901 N. 19th Avenue - 4 1-lb bags/99c and the kiwis are cheaper at Food City if you go there for the Thursday special (1o/$1) but overall, I feel like I got away with robbing a produce bank.

And my cart looked soooo beautiful, all yellow and red and orange and green (light and dark) and brown. I wish I knew how to use the camera on my phone because I wanted to take a picture.

Can't give you a welsite for El Rancho Market, though I looked long and hard. (well for a couple of minutes, anyway) It's an IGA market I just found. It opened in July. There's a second location at 1076 N. Arizona Avenue in Chandler. I didn't have time to check it out, beyond buying some beautifully fresh garlic bulbs (nice and firm, not all dried out and nasty) for 79c total. If you live near either location, I think they're worth a look see. Produce prices are much cheaper than the mainstream stores, although not as good as Pro Ranch from what I could see.

I did other shopping today, using COUPONS. I purchased

16 boxes/bags of granola bars and Nature Valley Nut Clusters
8 12-packs of coke
3 Thai Kitchen Noodles
2 big bags and 2 smaller bags of Nestle Crunches for the Trick-or-Treaters
4 boxes of Cheezits
2 candy bars (for the kiddies)

Grand total of those purchases? $26.11.

No, I'm not lying to you. No, I'm not some super-duper genius who spends all day surfing the web for deals. I'm just an everyday mom who found a Coupon Sense. Give it a try. Seriously

Give. It. A. Try.

It's 4 bucks for the 1st month, about $14 for every month thereafter. Just in the list I made above I saved enough to pay for several months worth. I do that week after week.

When you sign up, please use my referral code 1707971 and ask for Mindy C****** as your instructor (it's in the drop-down menu, you'll see it). I'll help you save big bucks for the kids' college fund, or maybe just to make the mortgage payment.

If you are already with CouponSense and you DO NOT have an instructor, please contact them and ask for me. Reference this blog, they'll put us together.

Instructors are FREE, so...take advantage of me. ;)

What I'm cooking tonight

THIS!

More or less. I had some leftover steamed carrots from the weekend, and some sweet potatoes I made last night so I went to All Recipes, plugged in the ingredients and got the mash. I have plenty of cooked apples. I'm still cooking down the honeycrisps I picked up from Bountiful Baskets a week ago. I'm pressure cooking a small pork roast I picked up for 4 bucks at Fry's a few months ago to go with it. From start to finish, this is a half-hour meal.

Good eating is as easy as having yummy ingredients in your stockpile. Leftovers aren't leftovers, they're another chance to make something that will keep your family at the table and under budget.

Pro Ranch is the best deal on produce this week!

This is just a nudge. I'm away and not able to do a full stockpile post. Check out Pro Ranch Market this week for great produce deals and some pretty good meat deals. Today's Wednesday produce deals are awesome pears 6 lbs/$1 for example and potatoes 10 lb/79c. Tomatoes are 4 lb/$1 all week. Pick up a bunch, make and freeze your own tomato sauce.

If Pro Ranch isn't possible for you, Food City has some pretty good produce deals on Thursday - Cukes are 5 for $1, for example. IF you've no Food City near you, check out Sunflower Markets, or Sprouts. Bashas has 5 lb of potatoes for 69c - excellent price. Bashas also has a great deal on Shamrock Farms milk - $2.99/2 gallons. It's a Buy One, Get One that works out to $1.50/gallon.

Also, Safeway has their Lucerne milk, $1.37/gallon, first 2.

If you're looking for Halloween Candy, the 99c Only stores have some pretty good deals this week.

Frys has whole chickens, 49c/lb, limit 4. Buy 4.
Safeway has Ribeyes and T-bones, bone-in, $3.77/lb. That's a good price for those cuts.
Basha's has b1g1 on it's Value pack Boneless Cross-rib or bottom-round roast. I think that will work out to $1.50/lb because the cross-rib and bottom round is $2.99 pound elsewhere in the ad. Basically, buy the big pack, get one free.

And Frys has Kroger PB, 99c/18 oz jar, which is a decent price. They are having their 'Anniversary Case-lot' sale. The prices are so-so.

If you need regular pasta, Sunflower Market has Luigi Vitelli for 77c/1 lb package.

Sorry this is so truncated. I'll post up something better when I'm back in a few days and can spend more time with the ads.

Can we talk? - baby food

When I was a new mom, I thought babies were some strange species requiring food different from the rest of us. When mine moved to solids (I had twins, I always refer to kids in twos!) I only fed them properly sealed 'Baby Food' in tiny jars and boxes lest I poison them. If there was a sale, I loaded up, but if there wasn't a sale, I loaded up anyway because the kids ate all the time and they had to have the special Baby Food or they would starve.

Right?

So one day, I'm wondering what babies ate before special Baby Food was invented. How did those pioneer ladies keep their babies alive? What did moms in third world countries do? How did Roman babies live to become Roman citizens? And how did early man ever evolve to walk on two feet without Beech-nut?

Answer?

They ate food. They ate the same food their parents ate just mushed up smooth and devoid of spicing.

Duh. I knew all those degrees I got would come in handy one day. Also, I saw on Discovery Channel that in a lot of primitive cultures, moms pre-chew the food, then squirt it into baby's mouth.

You don't have to do that. This is America. We have food processors. We have blenders. We have Magic Bullets.

Do you know what's in baby oatmeal? Oatmeal. Also wheat and it looks like they spray it with vitamins or something but basically it's very fine oatmeal.

What's in baby applesauce? Apples and water

Baby peach and bananas? Peach, bananas and water

Baby chicken? Pureed chicken.

Conclusion? You can make baby food at home for pennies rather than blowing dollars on it at the grocery store. Just cook whatever you want to feed baby. Leave out the salt and the sugar. Baby doesn't need it. Pop it into the processor of your choice with a little water and whirl it until the consistency is smooth.

Feed the baby.

I just saw Basha's Ad

And I feel like an idiot.

The good news? These prices are good until Tuesday, the 13th.

The bad news? If you qualify for a senior discount - you need to get there before the store closes to take advantage.

Here goes:

Large eggs are 88c, 80c with senior discount (s.d.)
Food Club Butter, $1.50/lb - $1.35/lb with s.d.
Simply Orange or Minute Maid orange, 59 to 64 oz - $1.99, $1.79 - s.d.
Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna - 48c, 43c s.d.
Chicken Leg Quarter, sold in 10 lb bag - $4.70, $4.33 s.d. (that's 47c/lb or 43c/lb)
Food Club frozen vegetables - 16 oz, $1, .90 s.d. (Yes, it's cheaper to blanch and freeze your own, but if you know you won't do that, get these, it's a pretty good price for frozen veggies.)

So sorry I didn't put this up earlier today. I hadn't seen the ad yet. I receive them on Wednesdays usually and Bashas hadn't yet put theirs online when I went to bed.

If you're a couponer, you can get your fabric softener for free at Basha's. I picked up 3 today, enough for 3 months or more of laundry. Total cost - 50c or so in tax.

Wanna learn more? Give CouponSense a try. Four bucks. Less than the cost of a Starbucks. Please enter my referral code (1707971) and ask for Mindy C****** as your instructor.