Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

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alliesmama4
Posts: 8591
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:10 pm
Location: Southern IL

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by alliesmama4 »

Sheila thank you for the idea of the tomato basil bread. It sounds really yummy.. Hopefully I will start to get back into bread making. My Kitchen-Aide stand mixer broke and it is difficult to make gluten free bread without it. Hopefully I can get things going soon. Janet Alliesmama
Janet Alliesmama
alliesmama4
Posts: 8591
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:10 pm
Location: Southern IL

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by alliesmama4 »

Momof2 Thank you for wishing me a Happy Birthday. I have been off line for a while due to my computer being hacked by someone in the UK. Everything is ok now.
It has been a while since I posted things. I had been snowed in for quite a while. My aide finally managed to get me out on the 22nd and we went to another town to my Drs office for me to get my monthly B-12 shot. I was way overdue and it was a 50 + mile round trip. The nice thing is that we can shop our way home and not really deviate off of the road too far. We did stop at a Chinese Buffet in another town to celebrate my 74th birthday. Yikes! It was around $8.50 with tip so not too bad. She wanted to pay for my meal and I told her thank you but it is too much. Just her buying her own meal was about equal to what she is getting paid per hour after deductions. We stopped at Dollar Tree next door to the restaurant then went to a little hole in the wall market down the road. Their groceries are too high but they have a meat market there with 3 butchers that do all of your custom cuts and wrap them like you want them. I bought 3 pounds of their bacon. It is the best bacon I have eaten in years. It was $3.99 a pound and worth the money. I grew up on a farm and we use to grow our own hogs and butcher them but sent the hams and bacon out to be processed. Their bacon tastes more like real bacon compared to the mass produced bacon in the grocery stores. They are individually wrapped in freezer paper so I was able to put them in the freezer without having to rewrap them. Once we were on home turf we went to the local chain store and I bought a rotisserie chicken for $5.99 and a little over a pound of potato salad for $2.69 and a large bottle of Crisco oil on sale for $3.99 saving $1.30 off of regular price. I had not planned on buying the oil but thought in the near future I will need some. Forgot to mention the Meat Market had bananas at the check out counter and they were free. I picked up a bunch and when I got home weighted them and they were 2.5 lbs. When I peeled them to put them in the freezer they were perfect except for one tiny blemish on one banana. I used my survey money and bought the chicken, potato salad, and 3 pounds of bacon and paid only $2.00 out of pocket for them!! Add in the free bananas and I made out like a bandit at the grocery store. The cooking oil was not planned on but still I feel like I had a great day at the grocery store. Janet Alliesmama

Edited for composition mistakes.
Last edited by alliesmama4 on Sun Jan 27, 2019 10:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
Janet Alliesmama
alliesmama4
Posts: 8591
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:10 pm
Location: Southern IL

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by alliesmama4 »

SandiSAHM wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:41 pm Love the picky people :D

I'm empathetic to a point. Looking back, I wasn't the easiest kid to feed. But wow for a while in adulthood I was the definition of "omnivore." As a gluten-free lowish carb vegan-leaning vegetarian :lol: in various forms since 1992, I'm right back to picky.

Whats really wild is that as you age, your perception of tastes change. There are things I used to eat that, even within my own restricted 'allowed' things, I won't touch them now. My 'sweet' receptors are out of whack. Started when I had DS at 39 and now at 53, bleh, what the hey, chocolate used to be yummy mostly across the board. Now? Some of it is okay, but the rest...

DH says its because Hershey moved a lot of their volume production out of PA.

But, that's okay, didn't need those calories anyway ;)
I have to laugh at myself and agree with you about tastes changing. I hated vegetable as a kid and then fast forward to being an adult I became a vegetarian and love them more than meat. Janet Alliesmama
Janet Alliesmama
alliesmama4
Posts: 8591
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:10 pm
Location: Southern IL

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by alliesmama4 »

The rotisserie chicken has almost been consumed. I put the bones/carcass and skin in a crock pot all night making bone broth. The whole house smells divine. Something about the aroma of chicken broth cooking on a cold day makes the house seem warmer and more cozy. I had many meals made with the chicken with a total of about 8 meals using the chicken in some form or other. Sometimes it was the main meat with sides and sometimes it was a nice sandwich for lunch. Also used some of the bits and pieces in leftover Dal.. The Dal was leftover from other meals and was not enough to be a complete meal but with the extra bits of chicken thrown in it was more filling. I have a small bowl of chicken left and it is in the freezer and I will make ketogenic chicken pot pie with it. Also will be making something with the chicken broth.. I am thinking chicken and dumplings.. Both of them, the chicken pot pie and the chicken and dumpling, are included in the 8 different ways I have consumed the chicken.However when you think about it the pot pie will be more than one serving as will the chicken and dumplings.. Not bad at all for a free chicken. I ate the last bowl of Dal and chicken for breakfast..Yummy! Of course Teddi had to have some tidbits when I was eating the chicken or cutting it up.
The Dal was leftover from lunch one day. My aide was going to work 8 hours to make up for snow days but forgot to bring her lunch. So I opened two packages of Dal, two different varieties. One was from Big Lots for $2.00 and the other was from Amazon $1.83. I had a small bowl of rice and we shared the packets. There was enough leftover for me to have two other meals with the chicken thrown in. It would have been enough if I served it over rice but I did not have any cooked. Not bad for having two people eat a nice lunch and then for me to have leftovers. I love the convenience and price of the Indian food from Amazon. I will order more when my finances are better. Right now I am going to be cooking from scratch and using everything I have to try to save money. Food is the one area where I can be flexible and save money. I do have a lot of food stockpiled bought on sale last year during black Friday and Cyber Monday sales online. I had never thought of doing that before and it was just by accident that I looked in to it and realized you can get some good food buys online that time of year. I always thought they were related to merchandise things like clothing and electronics. Now I am going to be working towards saving more money towards the end of the year to do more food stockpiling. Janet Alliesmama
Janet Alliesmama
alliesmama4
Posts: 8591
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:10 pm
Location: Southern IL

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by alliesmama4 »

I am really disappointed in my recent purchase of Del Monte apricots. When you open the can the fruit is floating in juice and the actual fruit is so fragile it is broken up.The can states apricot halves. I weighted it and the 15 oz can contains 8 oz of juice and the rest is apricots. Plus the label states that there is sugar and water in the can. So most likely the apricot juice is water and sugar... By food standards they are allowed to state contents 15 oz because of the juice. The same is done with veggies in a can ie green beans and canned beans usually have a lot of water in them as well. I need to weight canned beans the next time I open a can. I have been trying to buy a few extra cans of fruit when I shop. However will not be buying these again..Buyer beware. Janet Alliesmama
Janet Alliesmama
floridacatlover
Posts: 8056
Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:21 am

Re: Our 2019 No Spend Challenge

Post by floridacatlover »

alliesmama4 wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:12 pm I am really disappointed in my recent purchase of Del Monte apricots. When you open the can the fruit is floating in juice and the actual fruit is so fragile it is broken up.The can states apricot halves. I weighted it and the 15 oz can contains 8 oz of juice and the rest is apricots. Plus the label states that there is sugar and water in the can. So most likely the apricot juice is water and sugar... By food standards they are allowed to state contents 15 oz because of the juice. The same is done with veggies in a can ie green beans and canned beans usually have a lot of water in them as well. I need to weight canned beans the next time I open a can. I have been trying to buy a few extra cans of fruit when I shop. However will not be buying these again..Buyer beware. Janet Alliesmama
I think you should write a nice but firm note of complaint to Del Monte. Let them know you are disappointed. You could ask for your money back (which is what I would do) or at least ask for a coupon to use on another item. Look up their email address online and you won’t even have to use a stamp. Alternatively if you bought the can locally you could return the can to the store for your money back. Publix will take back almost anything and Aldi, too, but I’m not sure about other stores.

I read your post yesterday about Dal. I was not at all familiar with it so looked it up. Sounds interesting. I haven’t been to Big Lots lately but I remember that they do carry a lot of international foods.
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