Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Damage

My first Publix shopping trip after deciding to pay more attention yielded a $14.85 savings. Not bad for just two coupons! I actually looked at the advertised sales and checked out the "advantage savings."
Even though we don't eat that much chicken in a normal week, it was fun to see what we could do with a roaster. Publix had advertised "whole chickens .79 cents/lb" so I thought I'd get a sweet deal on a fatty. It wasn't mentioned, but the ad was for fryers -not roasters. I went for a roaster at $1.23/lb and was just fine with that.


The Chicken Experiment

Spent: $24.51

Roaster: $8.45

Addt'l groceries for CE: $16.06

Since strawberries are in season, I went for those but could have chosen apples or something similar for the salad. Also, I bought organic spring mix. The point of this, for me, was to cut corners where possible. Maybe if the Fresh Express brand is looking good next week, I'll use my $1.00 off coupon and skip the organic. We'll see...

I'm not a fan of eating food that's been in the fridge over, let's say, 1 day. It grosses me out. So, I opted to portion out the chicken, bag it (with some extra juice from the pan) and freeze it. Today, I took out the portion for the picadillo and just thawed it by placing it in cold water.

Speaking of, the picadillo was great! I would have never thought to use raisins and cinnamon in this dish but it worked. Well, John said it was great. I still can't taste a thing thanks to this cold and allergies. We should end up getting 4 meals (for 2 and a toddler out of this). It could have been 5 but we may have a guest over tomorrow for the chicken burritos and I didn't want to be left to make a $100 run to the store just to get an entirely different dinner.

Next week is to try and beat my previous record in savings, as well as use competitor coupons. I'm also going to try my hand CVSing.


5 comments:

Christine said...

Mmm... sounds good!! The March Gourmet magazine has a cool bunch of recipes using 2 roast chickens... Chicken w/pan gravy, chicken gyros, chicken lasagna (small only 8x8, but it looks really rich)also chicken broth (YUM) and another recipe for risotto with leeks, peas, and grilled calamari (we will be skipping that one) They were on sale for .79 a pound. Yay! Gonna start cooking tomorrow! :)

Christine said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christine said...

I was trying to leave a link:

Cook Smart: Birds in Hand

Nellie said...

I just read my gourmet yesterday! I'll try the lasagna next time!

Christine said...

The lasagna was stupid good. I used 2% milk... and it was still very rich. Only mod, I sauteed some red onion - and it was really, really yummy.