Rite Aid deals starting Sept 30 - Oct 6, more deals cont

Ramen on Sale! This is the lowest I've seen all year buy 4 Bundle Packs for $5 and get a 42 UP reward back.  That means you will have 24 individual packs for Ramen for $3 after UPs!!! I'm totally going to purchase up to the limit of 3.

If you must buy name Junk Food, which Drug Stores will occasionally have the Rock Bottom Stockpile prices.  Like after UP rewards, Goldfish crackers for $1 each, and Ritz Crackers for $1.50, Lays Stax for less than $1, Kashi for less than $2 that'something you will not be finding in grocery stores these days.  

Holiday Planning: Ritz Crackers are usually great for appetizers for parties so you might want to pick them up now because this is as low as you'll find it.  And the Generic Soda, basically comes out to $.50 a bottle!!! Who will know that you bought generic when your serving these.  The Lemon/Lime ones are great for mixing with liquor for mixed drinks recipes!

**Hurry, there a month long up deal ending Oct 2, where if you buy $10 in Gold Fish the original cheddar flavor, you get another $3 up. So you buy 7 Gold Fish, for $10.79 and get back 3 x $2 up, and another $3 up, making all 7 packs cost a total of $1.79!!!!

Toys R us, Macys, Bed Bath Beyond Gift card deal at Rite Aid deals starting Sept 30 -Oct 6

I'm already planning ahead for Christmas and holiday shopping, so I got really excited when I saw this Gift Card deal at Rite Aid.  Buy a $25 gift card and get a $5 UP Reward back (limit 2).  Basically that's 20% off! If you can't get away with homemade gifts or stockpile gifts, then this is an easy gift route.  You can flat out give the gift card as a gift or if your a savvy deal hunter, you can buy the gift card and use this it to score some door buster deal.  

As an example, the Bed Bath and Beyond card is great for any gifting occasion, particularly the holidays, weddings, etc.  For me personally, paired with their frequent $5 off coupon when you spend at least $15, and a sale item, I can score a pretty decent deal on a retail item that I can gift or use for myself.

Toys R us, if you have kids to consider, on top of their sale ads, when the holidays come they have great Black Friday deals you can use your gift card to pay for.**checked no fees or activation or expiration

Note: Most gift cards have no expiration date and no activation fee but its good to check first.  Also, Rite Aid doesn't let you use your UP rewards to actually buy gift cards.

I also put the scan disk deal up, because pre teens usually want these now for school and its a deeply discounted deal.

Ground Beef mini Batch Cooking Plan

Prep Work

Night before: 

Marinate Meat in one big bowl, by adding your cooking wine, soy sauce, salt and pepper.  Then take out 1/3 portion of meat to transfer to separate bowl and add your Sazon (this is just for the Spanish style meat)

Day of cooking:
Chop all your onions you need for Menu in Food Processor.  Coarsely process Onions for Carmelized Onions if making.

Wash your veggies.  Dice Bell Pepper.  Roughly cut Broccoli.

Cooking Strategy

I start with the Carmelized Onions (basically dump ingredients in Crockpot and forget till end of day)
Then make Flavored Rice (basically dump ingredients and press cook and forget about it till I'm eating)
Make the Spanish Style Meat (about 10-15 min at the stove)
When that is done, I make the burger patties allowing the food to cool a little.  Then I store the food in fridge.

Using the same pan, I proceed to making the Hamburger Helper meal ( about 15-20 minutes at stove). I make this last, because its sauce based and if you make it first you will have to clean the cooking pan. While I'm waiting for the liquids to boil, I put my Broccoli on Steamer plate and steam.  By the time the pasta in the Hamburger Helper is done cooking, I can turn off the flame for the Broccoli.  Then eat something I've made since rice would be done as well.  And when I've finished eating, the Hamburger Helper should have cooled enough for me to prep for fridge storage.

If you have this routine down, you can do all this and clean up in about an 1-1.5 hours.  I was so happy because I barely had any dishes to wash and for me its at least 15 FULL meals.  I won't be eating meat everyday but I have at least 15 meals I can turn to if and when I am craving meat.  If your feeding a family just multiply the recipes to fit your needs and fridge space.

And by the time you are reheating your your next meal, your Crock Pot onions should be done. And all you have to do is transfer to the fridge.

** I was motivated to cook my ground beef because I had a 10 LB of Onions and some Bell Peppers I got on sale that I needed to use.  I took the opportunity since I was already prepping these ingredients for my immediate meal plan to freeze my extras as well for future meals.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I got the idea from the fact that I had huge amount of leftover mashed Sweet Potato's from thanks to my $1 bag haul and I usually make the best pancakes from my leftover Soy Bean Okara.  This turned out really well and since sweet potato's are super healthy to start with this is a way to make your pancakes just a little bit more healthy.

SWEET POTATO PANCAKES Ingredients 1 cup sifted flour 1 tsp  baking powder 2 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder 1 cup cooked, mashed sweet potatoes 1 egg, beaten 1 cup milk Directions In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar and spices. In a separate bowl, mix together remaining ingredients until smooth. Add potato mixture to flour mixture and mix until blended. Heat lightly oiled pan or griddle.  Spoon in batter your preference of size. Lower heat and cook until bottom of pancake is nicely browned and tiny bubbles form along top edges; flip with spatula. Brown other side. Serve with syrup. Tip: I try to make them about toaster size, so that I can freeze a bunch and just pop them in toaster to reheat.

Pathmark Sale This Week

There are actually reasons to go to Pathmark this week and no coupons are required.  

First is to stock pile up on PASTA!! Without coupons, Pasta under $1 is a great deal.  They have America's Choice for $.78 in a variety of ounces up to 16 oz.  Pick the 16 oz type to get the most for your money.

Second is the Goya CANNED beans on sale 2 for $1, in 15 oz range.  Almost a pound.  I've never bought canned beans before so I don't know how much of the weight is water.  But given the price of beans these days being close to $2 a pound, and on average that yields 3 lbs.  This is a great deal and it saves you time as well.  I'm going for the Garbanzo beans because they've been costing around $2.29/lb dried.  And a little under 3 lbs with this sale would cost me $1.50.  Since I love chic peas, I'm going to pick some up for my stock pile.

Third is the canned veggies, particularly the corn buying 12, would be $.34 a can.  Canned corn is great cooked in butter and just great for tacos, salsa, they still have a crisp taste.

The other mentionables are the 5lb of potatos for $1.99, you can do a lot with them and I love the veggie pasta so $1 is a good deal as well.

GW Supermarket Food Haul $1 bags

So excited about my GW Supermarket $1 food bag haul.  I got so many great things perfect to batch cook for like the bag of tomatos, chiles, sweet potato's, red potato's, lemons, bell peppers all 7 bags for a total of $7.  The regular price for just one pack of the hot chiles is $3 alone.

Rite Aid Look Ahead Sept 30- Oct 6, 2012

Sometimes, the best deals on convenience foods can be found at the drugstore.  Don't ask me why, but it sounds weird but its true.  So for those of you worried about churning your ups from this Sundays upcoming freebie extravaganza, there are some really good food deals coming up at Rite Aid. No coupons needed!

For example after ups, V8 will be $2 for a large Bottle if you buy two (a sale price you will never find at grocery store).  And if you must have your name brand Cereal I have to admit I love Honey Nut Cheerios and Lucky Charms.  If you buy 4 packs for $10, you will get a $2 UP back, thereby making the cost per cereal $2 each.  But I careful I circled the terms because Rite Aid is getting slick, at first glance you think your getting the $ 2 up for buying 2 for $5, but the terms is if you buy $10 worth.

The best deal is the get $5 Up Reward for buyin $10 worth of a batch of items limit 3.  Which is 50% off if you can get a perfect $10 subtotal.  But looking at the deal more closely there is only one batch and its the higher margin items listed on sale for 2 for $5.  

What I am eyeing is the PEANUT BUTTER and Nuttella. So the scenario, I'm planning is buy 4 of the @2.99 products, for a total of $11.96.  Get back a $5 up reward, making the true cost $1.74 per item!!!!!  Which is the lowest price I've ever seen for Peanut Butter all year!  The same goes for the Chips and Cookies listed if you need to get junk food and are brand loyal.

Thanks to iheartriteaid for the scans!

For the Ramen lovers, Ramen Noodle Sale

 

It's crazy but even the price of RAMEN noodles have has gone noticeably up in just the past couple of months.  It used to be the best deal would be buying a 6 pk of Nissin Top Ramen at Rite Aid on sale for a $1 a pack.  But in the last few months, the best deal I've seen is the one ending today at Rite Aid where if you buy 4 for $5.  Or pay $1.29 if you don't want to buy 4 big packages.  

Now $.25 may not seem much to most people but if you consider we're talking about the fact the base price is from $1, that's a 25% increase in less then 6 months!!!  If you love ramen, I'd suggest you go stock up now.

And if you don't have time to go today, this week at Pathmark the sale price is $1.49

And for the Ramen connoisseurs, who swear by only Nong Shim you'd better hurry to HMART because they have the below sale going on.

Tangy Lime Chic Pea Salad

I was really pleasantly surprised with my experimentation in creating this recipe.  The Lime Juice is the key ingredient. It reminds me alil of Chimichurri but with protein from the Garbanzo beans so yummi and healthy cheap and low fat!

Tangy Lime Chic Pea Salad (4 side servings)

INGREDIENTS

1 Tomato

1 Small Cucumber 

1 Cup Garbanzo Beans aka Chic Peas 

1/4-1/2 Yellow Onion (to taste)

1/2 Lime Juice

1 TSP Olive Oil (optional)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Chop your Onion, Tomato, and Cucumber toss into main bowl.  If you using canned Garbanzo beans drain liquid first and then dump beans into main bowl.  
2. In small side bowl, squeeze your lime juice, add olive oil, and seasoning.  Then mix.
3. Toss dressing into main bowl and mix all.  Or better yet if you have a lid bowl just shake to mix.  Store in fridge for 1/2 hour so flavors can marinate and then serve when ready.

Note: Because of the Tomato's you don't want to use all of this up in 2 days, the tomato's will get soggy.

Because of the Tangy taste this will go great with bland Rice and Beans.

Note: I used my stash of cooked dried Chic Peas so 1 cup only cost me less than $.30 and the rest were ingredients that are frequently on sale in the summer all throughout the country.  But in NYC, tomato's, cucumbers, limes are regular Huge Dollar bag veggies in the Asian Supermarkets.

Cheap Summer Salmon Meal Less than $1 per Serving

I basically divided the fillet in half and made 1 oz servings for cooked Salmon.  I pan fried because I was too lazy to take out grill, but basically spent about 10 minutes cooking it.  Then plated on large lettuce leaf, so I could eat it as a wrap.  And took went to my fridge from some ready made chic pea salad and added that as a side dish.  And magically you have a quick, healthy cheap and easy summer lunch or dinner!

Note: In terms of cost this meal definately cost me less than $1 to make because I get access to huge dollar bags of Veggies from the Chinese Supermarkets.  But even if you didn't have that I am pretty confident you could do this for $1.50 per dish if not better because the Salmon I ended buying would have been the equivalent of $8/lb which is way too high!  The key is to cut your fillets thin like the prepacked manufacturers do.

No Fridge Lunch Box Solution: Cucumber Pesto Chicpea Salad

Has your summer garden or neighbor been overflowing with cucumbers and basil?  Do you need light lunch that requires no refrigerator and can be prepped way ahead of time? This salad is the perfect solution. 

Ingredients

1 cup ready Garbanzo Beans aka Chicpeas 

1 Cucumber (English preferable)

2 TBS Pesto (home made is fine)

1 TSP Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Cut cup Cucumbers to half moons or full circles (your preference).  In bowl put in your Garbanzo beans and Pesto.  Stir lightly so beans get coated with Pesto mixture.  Then toss in your cucumbers and lightly drizzle Olive Oil.  Then Salt and Pepper to taste.  And your done!!!!!!!

I love this recipe because its low fat, healthy, you can make big batch and proportion servings into your tupperware for the week and leave in fridge till your ready.  You don't even have to follow my measurements, just go with your taste.  If you do have fridge and access to microwave, you can carry little tupperware of Chicken to heat separately and then later add in to this salad.  

Making Hamburgers McDonald's Style

I was recently reading Top Secret Recipes and the section on McDonald's really peaked my interest.  Because health concerns aside McDonald's has always been my comfort food of choice.  It's just so yummi but the prices ensure I curb my cravings.  I finally figured out why I love it so much, the meat in their burger's all have MSG!!!! No wonder I'm addicted.  The most shocking thing, was discovering that for every ONE pound of ground meat they make 10 beef patties out it!!! Which as a frugal girl really, really intrigued me, talk about penny pinching!  In terms of the patty the recipe is simple, its salt, pepper, MSG, and dried onions.

I honestly couldn't stretch the meat that much so I decided to use real onions instead and was able to make 5 patties out of 1/2 LB of ground meat. I changed up the recipe a little since I'm not using MSG.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1/2 Medium Size Onion

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

Salt and Pepper to taste

You will need Wax Paper or cheaper alternative Plastic Wrap

Directions:

Using fork lightly mix your Soy Sauce, Salt, Pepper and Cooking wine into the ground beef.  Let sit and marinate for at least an hour in lower fridge.  Finely chop your onion or use food processor.  Then Mix in you onions to the beef.  Divide your meat so that you get 5 even amounts.  On flat surface lay out your Plastic Wrap.  The proceed to scoop your sections onto the plastic wrap like below.

Then cover the beef mixture with the other half of Plastic Wrap and gently press to form your patty.  

After you have formed your patties, pay attention to the ends.  Use your fingers to gentle make sure the ends aren't too thin as that would make it vunerable to falling apart when cooking.

As the book said, its easier to cook these then patties when they've been slightly frozen.  For me, I'm just putting these into my freezer for when I need an emergency Burger.What I discovered is that this method is great for getting the max out of your meat.  It would also work great for mixing black beans as well so you have a combo of meat and black bean burger patty !!  What I love about this is that my hands never get dirty and the clean up was just the bowl I used to marinate and the chopping board for the onions.  Next time, I get a great deal on Ground Beef, I'm going to make a ton of these and they take up almost no room in your freezer!

Cost Analysis: Even if you get your ground beef for $2 per LB which is way to high, it would cost you only $.20 of meat for each patty.  And it's a lot more filling than what you pay for ham or turkey sandwich meat.  And this version is NO MSG and real Onions!

Free Dove Deodorant Sample

Hurry and get this free sample before its gone!!!  Deodorant samples are rare ! I love how there mini-versions of the Regular size.  And their perfect for traveling, under TSA regulations Deodorant unless its pure powder gets counted as a liquid so you really do need a small size one!

Free Greeting Card from Cardstore.com

  I love these deals, this will be good till Sept 23, 2012 so go to http://www.cardstore.com/.  Pick and add your card it doesn't have to be a Birthday Card to your basket and at checkout apply the code above.  No credit card needed its just purely free!  I personally love the Photo Collage cards, because I print my favorite pictures on Card Stock.

Movie Ticket Deal **Regal Cinemas

This is hands down the best Movie Ticket deal, its paper gift certificates, with no expiration and no limitations!!!!!! You do have to pay extra for IMAX and 3-D but otherwise this is a sweet deal!!!!!  It's a bummer that there's a limit of one, but hey 4 tickets for $6 each, no expiration and limitation (like other certificates where you have to wait 2 weeks for new movies) and there's a huge one right on 42nd Street.

Also, reminder Fall is here and that means Holiday time, hint hint you can get these for yourself or for your future Movie Gift Baskets!!!!  And have you all noticed the cost of everything but guns in this country keeps going up, so buying these now if you keep them for years I bet the ticket price of a movie will have doubled the way things are going.

TIP Cheap Flavored Rice

So I got a ton of these for free a while back when they were doubling coupons, I'd never in my life used packed rice before but I've discovered their pretty yummy.  But since I'm not used to such a strong flavor in my rice, I experimented with diluting the taste.  And this is how I got to this blog post about making cheap flavored rice.  The proportion I am very happy with is for every 1 pack of Carolina Rice (4.5 oz) add 1 full cup of regular plain dry white rice.  Then add water to proper rice proportions.  The best thing about flavored rice is that its suppose to be a dry and so you can use super cheap Jasmine White rice. And because I'm extremely lazy I do this in my normal rice cooker.

Ingredients

1 Cup of Plain White Rice

1 Pack of Carolina Rice Mix

About 1 1/2 Cup Water ( follow your rice cooker)

Directions

Add the dry white rice, complete contents of the rice mix, and lastly water.

                                                Stir so seasoning can be evenly distributed.  

The close your rice cooker and press the cook button.  In about 30-40 minutes, you should be done.  Fluff the rice and serve.

If you have leftovers, this is a great type if rice to put in fridge and re-heat in microwave.

Hamburger Helper Healthy Modified Version

It's no secret I love love cheese and processed too.   What I don't like is the cost of Cheese and its calories. So as a frugal tip, anytime I can get cheap box Mac and Cheese or Hamburger helper for less than $.50, I'll pick it up so I can have satisfy my occasional cheese cravings.  As in the case with the pack of Hamburger Helper I got for super cheap at Target last Thanksgiving.  I modified the recipe by using less meat, slipping in black beans, unions and using reduce fat milk.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1/4 Medium Size Onion

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

1/4 Cup Black Beans

1 Package Hamburger Helper

2 Cups Milk (lowfat)

3/4 Cups Water

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Using fork lightly mix your Soy Sauce, Salt, Pepper and Cooking wine into the ground beef.    Finely chop your onion or use food processor.  Then Mix in you onions to the beef.  Let sit and marinate for at least an hour in lower fridge.  In oiled pan on high heat, cook the meat/ onion mixture till beef has browned about 5 minutes.  On the side mix your liquids with the Cheese Packet of the hamburger helper, then add to the cooking meat in pan.  Add in pasta and bring everything to boil.  Stir occasionally, so nothing sticks to bottom of pan.  Add in black beans.  Let simmer for about 10 minutes till pasta is cooked.  Taste and add additional seasoning if needed.

The reason this recipe is a great freezer style meal is for proportion control, I could seriously eat a huge bowl all at once but then I'd seriously be a glutton with all those calories.  Also the box suggests you could add in veggies like green beans, which I would consider for next time.

Cheap Jacks Haul, Cheapest Groceries in NYC

I just love Cheap Jacks on 34 Street, its just awesome!!!!!  I got the Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat Breads for $1.29, the huge tub of Vanilla Yogurt for $.99 and the tub of Kraft Flavored cream cheese for $1.29.  The Salmon is pre-marinated and 2 oz for $.99, which in hindsight I miscalculated on but its still relatively good deal.  I just know I can get the full Salmon on sale for around $4.99/lb.

And I just found a coupon for them not sure if its legit but I'll definately give it a try its from ValPak.

http://www.valpak.com/coupons/printable/Jacks-99-CentJacks-World/34146

Rite Aid Haul Sept 16

Most Rite Aid's are at 75% off on Summer Clearance so definately worth checking out your store.  Mine's has mostly cleared out but I was able to score these super cute Stoneware Salad Plates for $.49 each!!!

Other than that this sale week is relatively slow... the only freebie if you don't have coupons is the Sally Hansen Beauty Tools say Buy 1 get 2nd 50% off.  And there's a $1 SCR you can submit for limit 2.  The nail filers are $1.29 so if you buy 2, the second is $.64 and you can submit for total of $2 SCR.  I did it because I wanted to churn some of my UP rewards into cash.

And as a hidden September UP reward deal they have Ampro Hair gel Buy 2 and get $4 up reward back.  The 6 oz gel only cost $1.89 at my store so its slight money maker and a great way to roll your ups to extend your expiration date.

Batch Cooking, OAMC, Freezer Cooking

Batch cooking and Freezer Cooking has become an OBSESSION of mine.  The idea of cooking one day a MONTH seems like a dream come true.  I have literally read tons of the once a Month and Freezer cooking books and my conclusion is that unless you live on high fat freezer meals already its very difficult to be a 100% committed to this.  With some of the books, they give you a detailed meal plan and if your starting out you may not even like all the meals.  Aside from that a lot of the meals contain high sodium items like canned soup, flavor mixes, bottled sauces and cheese.. which are not necessarily cheap items you still have to spend time re-heating and a lot of the menu items are by Oven.  And for me personally, I can't live without the occasional crunch veggie stir-fry or salad and fresh sticky rice so I'd still have to cook.

BUT.. You can definately live on a modified version of this and enjoy the benefits of this type of cooking.

PRO's

• Reduce your food waste (you can use a lot more of your ingredients so they don't end up spoiling and sitting there forgotten)
• Reduce Cost (from having to buy take out, bulk buying on sales, less grocery trips and opportunities to buy out of your meal plan)
• Reduce CLEAN UP (eg: cut all your onions at once and use the food processor once and clean up only once)
• Save TIME
• Forces you to Pre-Plan your meals more and you freeze in proper proportion sizes 

For me, there are certain foods that I like that do freeze well and its a really great idea when you've got a huge collection of foods you've picked up on sale.  And to avoid being really stressed out, I would start small that ways you don't feel deprived of your fresh tasting meals and just give up.  BECAUSE they benefits are too great to ignore.

Easy Spanish Style Meat Dish

For ages, I'd been a huge admirer of Spanish foods being a fan of Sophie's in NYC.  And I'd tried reproducing my favorite dishes but there was always a missing component to my recipes and I'd finally figured it out! You need SAZON from Goya, its basically MSG but so basic to every Spanish style meat dish.  My recipe is super easy and versatile, and great even when frozen and reheated.

Here's my Recipe its really flexible you really just need ground beef, sazon, onions and bell pepper.  It makes 6 servings for me but 4 if you eat a lot more.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1 Bell Pepper (any thing you have on hand)

1 Onion

1/2 packet of Sazon

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

1/2 Chili Pepper (if you like heat and have on hand)

Directions:

• Put your Wine and Soy Sauce into your Ground Beef and lightly distribute.  Then mix in Sazon. Store in fridge overnight.
• Chop your Onions and Bell Peppers set aside.
• Heat and Oil up your cooking pan, add in Onion and Chili Pepper (if using).  Let cook for 3 min, then add in your meat and keep moving the items in pan.  Cook till meat looks about done and add in your Bell Peppers.  Add Salt and Pepper to taste.

I love this dish because it's so yummi and the bell peppers and onions are great ways to stretch the meat use out.

Usually I serve over my Frugal Version of Spanish Rice but today I was too lazy to make a new batch of rice.

Rite Aid Look Ahead Starting 9/23/12 Freebies

Great reason to keep churning your existing UP rewards so they don't expire in time for the start of this sale! I love me my free toothpaste and its going to be a limit of 2 so that's sweet!!! And the hand sanitizer is limit of 4!  I added the Doritos because after UP rewards its like $2 a bag which acutally is an all time low for stock up.  Thanks to Iheartriteaid for the preview ads!

Most people are complaining about Rite Aid's new method of loading UP Rewards to your card and the next day limitation on use, but have you noticed when you use them Sales Tax is crazy reduced!!