In addition to the CVS MoneyMaker deal, I also did some shopping at Safeway (I had to drive back to my sister's house because I forgot to give her credit card back to her which she asked me to hold during the birthday party. Since I was already there, I went to a Safeway near her place — I do need to find a Safeway around here so I can take advantage of the General Mills deal on Wednesday).
I thought that I was going to have to be quite tight with shopping this week due to the loss of all my best coupons and since the deals this week weren't very good. Today the mail brought me good news:
The Kraft rebate check I applied for arrived (this rebate was for items I purchased during this challenge) for $10.00 which meant I had $9.58 extra to spend (subtracting out the cost of the stamp to apply for the rebate). I decided to go ahead and use it all up to get some more food:
I ended up purchasing 2 jars of Skippy natural peanut butter, a package of shredded cheddar cheese, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, 1 lb of fresh sting beans, 5 tomatoes, 1 onion and 2 broccoli crowns for a total of $10.45. Subtracting the $9.58 rebate, the final cost to me was $0.87
In addition, I made my first trip to Walgreens. I have avoided Walgreens up until this point even though it has good deals from time to time because it just wasn't worth the effort to go to the one nearest my house since it was much further than CVS. Where I am currently house sitting, however, there is a Walgreens within walking distance so I decided to go in and give one of the deals that Niki found this week a try. I chose the Nabisco Cookies or Crackers, 3 ounce which were $0.50 and used two $1.00 off 2 Nabisco Crackers from 5/16 Smart Source Sunday newspaper coupon insert:
That gave me four Ritz cracker packs for free and the deal worked like a charm:
I'm not sure if I will be eating these or giving them away — they don't look all that appetising to me, but I'm sure that I will not hesitate to break them open if I get a snack craving. I have more coupons, so I will stop in to buy some more (there is a limit of 4 per day) for the food banks.
Vanilla Yogurt with Fresh Apricots
I took one of the two remaining yogurt cups (vanilla) I had and added a few of the gathered apricots chopped into small bits to start of the morning:
Potato Pancakes
I need to use up the last of my potatoes as they are starting to look old so I decided to make potato pancakes which turned out pretty well (better than I anticipated). I ate two and saved two for later:
Since I was running around all afternoon (as seems to be usual these days), I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich (I'm loving all the bananas I have and I'm actually regretting I didn't buy at least one additional package), toasted Wheat Thin chips and blueberry pomegranate juice (half water, half juice)
Chicken & Egg Dinner Salad
I decided to make a salad for dinner (it was actually a lot bigger than the photos make it appear – the bowl was rather large and deep) with lettuce, spinach, a touch of onion, half a tomato, the last strip of chicken and a hard boiled egg topped with Italian dressing:
This is the current list of food I still have
This is the current list of what I have purchased:
Goal: 100 days eating on $1 a day
Current Money Spent: $47.70
Money Left to Spend: $52.30 ($5.83 must be spent at CVS)
Retail Value of Everything Purchased: $1337.90
The Beginning ::: Day 73: I Can't Flip Omelets
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Right… Yoghurt.
Cooking challenge for you, then.
Assuming it’s economical for you to do so, and assuming milk is cheaper than yoghurt in your area, or at least more available via coupon deals, have a go at making your own yoghurt.
There are plenty of guides out there, though I quite like the look of this one: http://hubpages.com/hub/How_to_make_your_own_yogurt_-_An_illustrated_guide because it actually makes a claim about how much could be saved ($16 saved, over the cost of buying individual yoghurt portions) although it is a bit heavy on paraphernalia.
As usual, there are also a ton of YouTube guides on the subject, too. Here’s one which turned up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BK7VIvMLSc and I picked it because the guy adds sugar and flavourings to his yoghurt, which proves to the novice how easy that is to do, if it’s desired.
Have a think about it, it’s a money-saving process which pays for any initial equipment costs eventually, and it gets you some pretty decent yoghurt.
Forgot the important part.
Make sure to get LIVE yoghurt. Live yoghurt makes more yoghurt. Dead yoghurt, not so much.
I like the name of your Walgreens cashier.
Elvis is not dead, he works at walgreens! Making your own yogurt is fairly easy, I make mine in the crock pot. You can even freeze it to make frozen yogurt, although you have to add a bit of sugar and strain out some of the whey.
@Phil
There is nothing wrong with splurging if you have created the savings. I had just lost all my best coupons so there weren’t really any good deals I could do so I had the choice to wait another week and get by on what I had or buy a few things for the challenge. Since this isn’t save as much as I possible can and I am still well below the goal of eating on $1 a day, no harm done 🙂
I have a question about SS and RP ‘inserts’ and didn’t know where to ask it. I know you get the Sunday insert ones and then date them. What about the SS inserts that come in the free papers that just get thrown at your house? Most places I have lived have gotten a free local paper, I never noticed the coupons in them before but the one we got yesterday had a SS in it that was different from Sundays. Also what about the SS and RP that come in the mailbox as junk mail? those are also different from the Sunday ones. But they both have similar coupons to the Sunday inserts.
@tash
Ahhh, you are one of those lucky people that get them a variety of ways. The coupons inside should basically be the same even though the covers may be different. I get the Sunday paper and the local paper ones (not the mail ones) where I live. Even though there may be differences in them, I don’t worry about it and don’t spend any time figuring what those differences may be (just not worth the time for me).
Cool. What do you date the local paper ones? do you date them the same as the previous Sunday? or do you date them on the day that they get there?
@tash
Date them the previous Sunday (if you look closely at the crease on the outside, it will have the date of the insert on it so even if they accidentally get mixed up, you can always know what week an insert is from.
Jeffrey, that’s cool! It didn’t really mention your thinking behind buying like that in your post, so I was a little confused, is all. You’ve definitely been doing incredibly well! When you finally decide to finish, you could probably throw a huge party with what you have left over…
It’s really interesting to follow this, but such a shame that coupons don’t seem to work the same way in the UK.
That salad looks so yummy.
Heh, Elvis. Nice.