Stop and Shop Bargain Meal, week of 8/21-8/27

I apologize for my lateness in getting my bargain meals up. My kids are out of the house for a few days and I spontaneously decided to purge all the clutter, trinkets, trash, and Barbie shoes from their bedrooms. It ended up being a monumental task... I am basically done, but I have a mountain of perfectly good useless stuff to donate to Goodwill. Anyway...

Hrm, guess what's on sale at Stop and Shop? Pork chops again, 1.99/lb (and grapes again, .99 lb.) What on earth can we do with that? Well, I am learning not to be surprised when I find recipes that involve odd combinations of ingredients. When I typed "pork" and "grapes" into Allrecipes.com, I got a list of possible recipes (some involved grape juice, some involved grape tomatoes, but some involved actual grapes! Imagine that.)

One recipe that sounded good, and do-able, with some substitutions, is Pork Tenderloin with Honey Grape Sauce. The recipe calls for a 2 lb. pork roast that you grill, and then you make a sauce with the grapes that you pour over it. Obviously, you can just cook the pork chops any way you like, and then make the sauce. The recipe calls for red grapes rather than green grapes, but it's certainly worth giving a try with green grapes. Most of the other ingredients are common pantry staples, and if you don't have something you can always substitute (chop up a little onion in place of shallots, or use ground ginger instead of fresh.)

To serve with it, you can make a box of Rice-A-Roni, $1/box this week, and whatever vegetables you have on hand. I bet the grape sauce would be very nice poured over rice!

What To Do With Stockpiled Veggie Burgers: Shaw's Bargain Meal week of 8/21-8/27

This week there is another catalina deal going on at Shaw's- this time, it's ConAgra food products (so Hunt's ketchup & tomatoes, Wesson Oil, things like that) and Kellogg's products- buy $25 and get $10 for your next purchase. I was holding out for a good Kellogg's sale so I could do the $10 Fuel for School rebate- so that's what I did during my first shopping trip today. Basically, I got my 8 boxes of cereal (though I need more cereal like I need a hole in my head) and 2 boxes of Morningstar Farms black bean burgers for less than free! With my coupons, I spent about $17 out of pocket; then I got $10 back, and I sent in for the $10 rebate.

Can I just interrupt this blog posting to say that manufacturer's rebates are such a huge pain?? I mean, they ask you to buy 10 products, and not only do you send in the receipt, but you have to cut the UPC code off of every box? Do they realize that I'm stockpiling here, and these boxes will be in my basement for months- I don't want a whole bunch of mutilated cardboard boxes in long-term storage. And of course all that cardboard in the envelope makes it impossible to send in the rebate with a single stamp. Ok, complaining time over. Obviously, they make it difficult so that most consumers won't even bother with the rebate.

So, with sales like this going on, it's been easy for me to stock up on veggie burgers lately. Now, almost everybody in my family will eat veggie burgers without complaining. I really don't mind them at all. But they're not the kind of meal that you really look forward to. I generally serve them when I'm not feeling imaginative and I want something on the table fast. I think my mom used to serve us hot dogs (blech) when we were kids, when she was in the same situation. So I was curious- is there anything more interesting you can do with veggie burgers? Once or twice I've cut them up and used them in a pasta sauce or something, but I want more ideas now, because I have so many!

Some possible ideas:

• slice them up in strips and grill them; use them to top a salad
• slice them in strips for use in a stir-fry
• crumble up and use either alone or combined with ground meat in chili, shepherd's pie, pasta bakes
• add to ground meat in making meat loaf
  
• chop them up and mix with salsa and cheese- serve as a dip for chips.
• slice them up, cover in bread crumbs, and fry them
• mix them up with beans as part of a burrito or taco filling
• make Sloppy Joes
• use them as part of a stuffed peppers recipe

This week at Shaw's, there is a pretty sweet deal on potatoes- a 5lb bag of red potatoes is only .99 after you use a Shaw's coupon. Based on that, and our surplus of vegetarian fake meat, I think an attempt at Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie is in order. Most recipes online feature some form of curried lentils as the "meat"- I've seen a few with just chopped veggies and some with tofu, crumbled mushrooms, things like that. But this one involves actual veggie burgers. It has a lot of ingredients, but anything you're lacking you can probably substitute or leave out.

I prefer my shepherd's pie to be on the simple side. I usually just season my ground meat with pepper and salt, stir in whatever vegetables I have (corn is nice), top with homemade mashed potatoes, and bake (a few minutes under the broiler gives a nice crispy crust.) It's one of my family's favorite foods so I don't feel the need to try a fancier version anytime soon. I plan on trying out my own version of Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie in the near future, and I'll keep you posted as to the results!

On Vacation...

No bargain meal this week- I'm on vacation. Be back next week!

Another Frugal Food Experiment: Poor Man's Ricotta Cheese

Last week I subjected my whole family to the Poor Man's (Turkey) Burger. All the burger- eaters seemed to like it just fine. This week, I have been trying to use up random food in the house without buying more (well, apart from crazy Shaw's stockpile runs) because we're going away and I don't want things in the fridge to go to waste.

Anyway, I had this idea to make stuffed manicotti, only I didn't have any ricotta cheese. What I did have is a large zucchini. When I was a teenager I started making a vegetarian lasagne recipe that involved shredding zucchini and mixing it with the ricotta cheese. I have made this for years now, and no man, woman, or child of any age who has ever consumed it has ever noticed or complained, because it is tasty and no one notices the zucchini.

Well, today, I wondered, what would happen if you just had the zucchini, and no ricotta cheese whatsoever? Such as, right now? I was going to try.

Manicotti Stuffed with Kale & Zucchini

1 package manicotti
2 cups kale, washed and torn
1 large zucchini
5-6 leaves fresh basil, chopped (or dried, if you don't have fresh)
dash pepper & salt
2 tbsp grated Parmesan
1 jar pasta sauce
1/2 cup shredded cheese

a little fresh parsley (optional, but you knew that)

I also had some random beans from my garden. They are completely unnecessary in this recipe.

1. Prepare the pasta according to package directions. In a separate pan, steam or boil the kale. Meanwhile, grate your zucchini. I always use a regular cheese grater, but it takes a long time and makes my hand hurt. I'm sure a food processor would be faster. I got one at my bridal shower, but have yet to remove it from its box. I'm sure I'll use it someday.
2. Add pepper, salt, basil, and parmesan to the zucchini mixture. Drain the kale well and stir in with the zucchini. If the mixture seems overly runny, you can strain off any liquid, but I didn't bother.
3. Put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan. Stuff the manicotti. I wasn't sure how to do this. I tried using my fingers. Most of the manicotti had tears in it, anyway, so I ended up just splitting them open, putting the filling inside and closing them back up. I guess I wasn't the first person with that idea. Arrange the manicotti semi-neatly in the pan. (I threw the beans on the top. Just ignore them.)
4. Pour rest of sauce over pasta and top with cheese and fresh parsley. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour.
   

This was a very happy cheapskate meal. The zucchini was .50 a pound, the manicotti was reduced to .50 as well, the sauce I stockpiled for next to nothing, and the kale was .69/lb. The basil was free from the garden (along with the random beans that I threw in there. I had to do something with them) and the cheese was probably the most expensive thing, maybe .75 worth? We had it with some salad and slices of homemade bread. This meal probably cost $3.00 total, plus it made leftovers.

And- everyone liked it! The kids asked a couple of times, "What are the noodles full of?" and my husband said, "It doesn't matter. It's good, so eat it." And they did. I didn't think it tasted like cheese or anything, but grated zucchini is definitely a satisfactory pasta filling on its own. Another successful frugal food experiment... I'm on a roll!

Pork Chops are Peachy: Shaw's Bargain Meal

Okay, I just explained my thought process when I try to come up with a Bargain Meal of the Week. I just looked at my Shaw's flyer, saw that Pork Chops were 1.69/lb and peaches are .77/lb. I would never think to put those two things together. And yet, lo and behold, the internet bursts forth with all kinds of recipes involving peaches and pork! Apparently this is a classic flavor combination, like pineapples and ham, or apples and pork, or raisins and pork... hmmm... maybe pork just goes well with fruit, in general?

Peachy Mustard Pork Chops seems like a good, basic recipe to start with- I imagine you could substitute the peach preserves with some fresh peaches that were chopped up and mashed a little bit. You could serve it over some hot rice with a little butter and salt. If you want fast, Shaw's has Kraft Minute Rice (does it really only take a minute?) on sale for 1.89/box, or if you have more time, Shopper's Value Long Grain Rice is 2.99 for 5 lbs.

I will be taking my Shaw's bargain shopping on the road this week- we are going on vacation Saturday! We rented a house near Acadia National Park in Maine, and I was so thrilled to learn that there is a Shaw's (and a Hannaford's) close by so I can pick up some perishables. (I'm bringing non-perishable stuff that I've stockpiled with me, of course.) I wish there were more types of meat on sale this week... it will be hard for me to pay more than 1.99/lb for meat. (But making dinner ourselves for eight people will be a lot cheaper than going out to eat every night! I have to remind myself of that. )

Strawberry Balsamic Chicken: S&S Bargain Meal of the Week

So, my thought process when trying to come up with bargain meals is, "What meat is less than 1.99 a pound?" and "What in-season produce is on sale this week?" Then I'll do some curious Googling and try to come up with an interesting way to use those ingredients that doesn't seem too time-intensive or use a bunch of crazy ingredients (because it's tough to be a frugal cook who is looking for unusual ingredients every week.)

This week's recipe seems to be a step up from the simple family meal- it sounds like it would be nice to serve for guests. But, you know, you should never serve a new recipe for guests- you always have to try it out yourself first. So why not try this out on your family? With boneless chicken breast on sale for 1.79/lb and strawberries on sale for 3 for $5 ($1.67 per 1 lb. container,) Strawberry Balsamic Chicken sounds perfect. Another key ingredient is strawberry yogurt; S&S brand yogurt is on sale for 8 for $4 (.50 per container.) Since you need 4 containers, this isn't going to end up being a $5 dinner, but for a fancier meal, it's still quite affordable. Most of the other ingredients are pantry staples, and if you don't have a particular herb or spice, you can just omit it. (I have parsley growing on my doorstep, but not mint, so I'd probably leave the mint out.) I won't have a chance to try this recipe this week- we're going on vacation- but I definitely want to try it out soon. Let me know if you try it and like it!

S&S brand Garden Salad is 1.29/bag, so you can serve that with whatever veggies you might have around, and some bread or rice would round out the meal. Not a $5 dinner, but not too shabby!

An Unfrugal Mistake, or How I Paid $127.50 to Have Four Bags of Trash Taken Away

My husband and I had a dilemma about a month ago and we weren't sure how to resolve it. We live in a town with no townwide trash pickup. You either have to pay a company of your choosing to pick up your trash, or you can purchase a dump permit and bring all your trash and recycleables to the dump yourself.

Since we have lived in our house, we (and when I say "we," I mean "he") have been bringing our trash to the dump ourselves. It isn't that bad. We can recycle all kinds of paper, plastic containers except styrofoam, metal, and glass. I have bins in a kitchen closet to keep rinsed-out containers and stacks of paper to be recycled. The only things that we actually throw away are things like plastic outer wrapping, weird containers that we can't figure out how to recycle, and gross things like tissues and meat containers. We throw all our food scraps in a compost pile. So we fill a trash bag *maybe* once a week.

(Our town had decided to institute a "pay as you throw" program where you'd have to pay $2 per bag of trash you threw out. We thought that was a great idea, because we'd end up paying maybe $100 a year to get rid of our trash. However, plenty of other people protested and so they went back to the old system.)

So what's the problem? Well,we found out my husband would be deploying overseas with the military at some point during the winter. He thought that it would be a good idea to hire a trash pickup company so that I wouldn't have to worry about dealing with the trash when I was running the household by myself. In theory, this seemed like a good plan. During the school year, when I'm working, I get very stressed when my to-do list starts to get too long. Keeping things as simple as possible seemed like a good idea. Plus, the trash is kind of gross, and I didn't want to put it in my nice pretty car, and we were planning on taking my husband's truck off the road while he was away. So, we reasoned that the cost of the trash pickup was balanced out by not having to pay insurance on the truck.

Since the dump permit was supposed to renew on July 1st, my husband called to start trash pickup now. The cost difference is significant. Trash pickup costs $75 per two month billing cycle, plus a $15 fuel surcharge, so it's basically $45 a month or $540 a year. (We did not know about the fuel surcharge until we actually got our bill.) The dump permit costs $178 a year, or $14.83 per month.

Once we had signed up, it was a couple of weeks before the trash company gave us our special giant barrel- it's nice and huge and sturdy and squirrelproof, and has wheels. It looked awfully silly to put our lone bag of trash inside this giant receptacle, but whatever.

Meanwhile, our piles of recycleable materials were starting to overwhelm us. We started bagging it and piling it in the basement, and it soon took over half of the unfinished portion of our basement. When my husband had initially called the trash company, they told him that there would also be recycling pickup, and they would be sending him information about what day the recycling truck would be here and what they would pick up and things like that.

I don't think the recycling truck would be planning on picking up 17 bags of #2 plastic containers.

We got no recycling information. I started to get frantic. My husband called the trash company several times, but the phone rang and rang and no one answered. The website for the company was no help; it didn't even list the right phone number for the company. It drove me crazy that we were paying $45 a month for a truck to take away a single bag of trash each week. It would take me 10 minutes to go drop that off at the dump. The hourly wage for that would be something like $60 an hour. And I couldn't open my kitchen closet without an avalanche of tin cans and Yoplait containers raining down on me.

I was really, really starting to regret our decision. We received a bill the other day which informed us that if we cancel the service now, we are responsible for the current billing cycle- so we just got charged $90 for the next two months, until the end of October. I calculated what the cost would be for our yearly trash service if we cancelled now and got a dump permit. It would be $25.40/month, or $305.50 per year. Even though we just wasted a whole bunch of money, it would still be worth it to cancel.

So yesterday, I went online and signed up for the dump permit. I ran out in the yard to show my husband the receipt. "See?! The agony is over! We can get rid of our recycle stuff again!" He was as thrilled as I was.

This morning, he said to me, "Wow, so we really have a dump permit? I can actually go to the dump? Hooray!" But he still expressed concern that it would be hard for me to take the trash when I was alone. "Oh come on," I said. "70-year-old ladies take their own trash to the dump in their little Toyota Camrys. Surely I can handle it."

Later on, my husband came in from the backyard while I was checking my email. "Hey, it's a good thing you cancelled the trash pickup. It won't matter anyway.

"My deployment was cancelled, so I'll be able to take the trash myself. I'm not going anywhere."

I never thought I would get so emotional about stinkin' trash. I get a whole year of life with my husband back. God is really good to us.