Kale Quinoa Salad

New Year Resolution, to eat healthy!  I was doing so well until the holidays when I took a mini break from Diving.  But now I'm back and healthy is a big focus for me this year.

Anyways, went on my first dive of the year and picked up at least 5 of these Kale Quinoa salads.  Since I can only eat so much and I really wanted to preserve these because their such high quality ORGANIC ingredients.  I decided to separate the Kale leaves from the Hemp seeds and Quinoa so I could freeze them.  The Kale I'll freeze for Omlettes and SOUPS!  And Quinoa I'll also freeze them for recipes later on.

Roasted Squash Kabocha and Beet Salad with Fennel

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Starting the first post of the year with super Vegan Recipe Idea

Organic Avenues Roasted Squash  & Beet Salad

Fennel leaves, Kabocha Squash, Golden Beets and fancy organic dressing.

Honestly, as highly priced everything in this store is I can see its appeal if you were wealthy. Everything in there you know is mostly organic and they really use high quality ingredients.  But I'm not so I use their product line as a guideline for copy cat receipes.  Organic avenues salads cost over $10.  This Roasted Squash and Beet Salad is really filling and healthy.  Analyzing this salad, I came to realize its  a really simple salad that you can make at home for under $3 easy.  And even less if you mass produce it.  Is that extra $7 really worth their fancy dressing?

I literally dissected the whole box and its a couple of pieces of Kabocha Squash aka Japanese pumpkin that I've always raved about I can get on sale in season for $.39 /lb, currently on sale for around $.59/lb.  Fennel the leaves are not a ton and looks to be maybe 2 beets worth in the salad.  The only thing you have to buy Organic is the Fennel since the Squash and Beets are root like veggies with tough skins!

To make out home all you have to do is roast or even steam the Kabocha ,cut it up and you can put in separate container or baggie.  The Beets you only have to cut up!  And since Fennel is a really tough leaf, you can even leave the entire salad together when you bring this to work.

Freegan Haul

Yummi! EPIC bc of where it came from and how super clean and quick the dive was.

Sheckys Girls Night Out NYC

It was my first time going to this Girls Night Out Shecky's event, a friend sent me an awesome deal for tickets just $9 !  Honestly, not a horrible event but we left as soon as we got our drinks worth in and more.  I'd say the gift bag pictured above is cool but not super exciting.  Was it worth it? Well it depends ..if your just going with your girls and don't mind standing ..it was crowded and a line to get in as well.  You do get cheap drinks from I guess ok looking male bartenders.  I'd go if you want a cheap night of drinks with the gals.  Their was promo dessert wines which I loved, a beer section of Guinness girly beers and a regular drinks section. The reason I wouldn't recommend it to some people is that it was a little ghetto, NO ONE really seemed into shopping.  I'd say when I went 90% of the people were ghetto and loud and trying to cut.  Some people I saw brought in a bag of fry chicken from outside and just at it at one of the few standing tables.  But considering the bag had two full price products granted everyone gets something  a little different  And you can use this a quick pregame drinks place and goodie bag is worth at least $6 alone.  But thank goodness that I had plans afterwards.

Rite Aid Black Friday 2013

Starting with the out right freebies!

The food deals, honestly lowest pricest I've seen for these products.  And who doesn't need baking soda?

The Awesome quick cheap stocking stuffers or gift basket products.

I will say that these Home Repair gift cards are golden!! I'm going to get the max, its buy a $50 card and get $10 up reward back.  Thats 20% easy discount!

And the hidden sneaky deal is the Kushyfoot products limit 6, at $1.99 each they are so freakin worth it, it even includes the to go flats!

Rite Aid Look Ahead sales starting Nov 24

Finally, a reason to get excited and back into Rite Aid.!! Lots of freebies for the weekly sale starting Nov 24!  All these freebies are fine to get because you can easily roll your up Rewards to their Black Friday Freebies!  I personally plan to get my freebies on first day and then use them to roll onto the AWESOME Tide aka P&G deal they have.  You do need lots of your P&G coupons though but hopefully you took heed to what I've been saying and stockpiled a bunch of these booklets.

Tide Deal
Scenario 1
Buy 6 Tides  at $5.94 = $35.64
 use 6 $2 off coupons = -$12
Pay OPP or with other ups= $23.64  and get back $15 up rewards making real cost just $8.64!!!
Thats $1.44 a bottle + tax!
note with this scenario you will need to make 2 transactions as its 4 like coupons per transactions.


Other deal to mention not the best but the GROUPON and Living Social movie ticket deals are really scarce these days is the MOVIE gift cards, buy $25 worth and get $5 up reward, basically a 20% discount.  Its a good deal because there should be no exclusions and its an easy gift .

thanks to I heart Rite Aid for the aid scans!

NYC Freegan Finds and Update

Healthy Work Snacks- BYO so you don't waste money on vending machines!

I know I've been pretty MIA lately .. I've just been enjoying life, working and of course DIVING!! Anyways, I've finally got a day to myself and so I started thinking of the work week ahead.  My fridge is packed full so come Monday I'm moving a weeks worth of food to my office fridge.  I can't believe I didn't get more lunchables on my of my dives last week they threw a ton of them out in boxes (which I've since removed for extra space and so I don't have to clean).  Grr I had no idea they had Capri Sun's in them as well, man who'd of thought I would have found OSCAR MYER lunchables on a dive.  So thats why I havn't even been posting pictures of my Hauls any more because I've kinda got my grove on diving.  Remember all the things I said I had trouble finding .. well not anymore I have tons of Cheese, Yogurts, Lunch Meats, and just enought that I've probably spent less than $30 these past months on food.  And those trips were more couponing stock pile trips.  The above is a weeks worth of work week snacks.  Sometimes, I'll add whole grain cereal to the yogurt for healthy breakfast.

Anyways, I've also found lots of actual EGGs in my dives now too.  Crazy huh.. and I did take some pics of some recent things like tons of Organic Butter.

And the below, again.. I'd wish I'd had grabbed more of this stuff.  Its so yummi!  And these box things are the easiest because to clean all I do is remove the boxes!

I just wanted to say how amazingly grateful to have the chance to do these Food Rescues aka dumpster diving.  It is one of the best things about living in NYC!  I've literally just used all the extra money I've saved and TIME (I rarely cook)  to have fun and just relax!  And while I've been writing this post, I've been doing a yogurt face mask :)