groceries

Life as a personal grocery shopper.

by

We found chicken for less than 12 cents per pound yesterday, a discovery too good to keep to ourselves. Instead, I did what I always do: Texted my niece and my neighbor to see how many packages they might want. While I never wanted to be a personal grocery shopper, I can’t keep deals like that to myself.

Those poultry deals were five-pound-plus packages of chicken drumsticks for 64 cents, and boneless, skinless, organic chicken breasts (2½ to 2¾ pounds) for $1.28 apiece.

We left the store with a lot of chicken. It helped them, and it helped us reach our goal of getting a free turkey* through a store offer.

Sharing deals is a sort of frugal ministry for me. Maybe it could be for you, too.

I’m not saying you must do this every time you hit the store. Or maybe at all, if it doesn’t fit your current life. But given how expensive food is getting, think what a gift this could be to others. 

Read more

Low- or no-spend February 2023, Weeks 2 and 3. (I’m back.)

by

Running a little late, obviously. I was already a bit tardy with the low- or no-spend February challenge update when a stomach bug made me almost completely work-avoidant. Many quarts of hydration and loads of hours of sleep later, I am much healthier. But catching up on belated assignments meant missing a week.

While mildly ill, I was reminded yet again that sickness means either spending way too much (medical co-pays, prescriptions, special foods) or feeling too crummy to spend much at all.

This time around it was the latter, fortunately. I was also reminded that I live in a low-maintenance prepper paradise where just about anything I needed was already in hand (and likely bought on sale or at Costco). Powerade? We got it. Canned chicken soup? Ditto. Generic ibuprofen PM, so I could sleep for 12 hours at a stretch? You bet.

That sleep was some of the coziest ever, thanks to the brand-new-to-us down comforter  whose frugal purchase was detailed in the first roundup. Reading some of the comments on that piece, I was impressed by a couple of readers’ stirring tales of thrift.

Read more

Low- or no-spend February 2023: Week 1.

by

(Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.) Let me say this upfront: I spent money. Before you … Read more

Pinto bread: A weekly beans story.

by

Earlier this month I mentioned a frugal challenge called “weekly beans.” DF and I have vowed to make beans the focus of at least one meal a week. In part that’s because of inflation, which is scaring our frugal pants off right now. Mostly, though, it’s because we have so many beans in storage.

Sure, they’ll keep indefinitely (or what passes for indefinitely at our ages). But why have them, so why not eat them? Especially since they were bought at a lower price than they go for now, and since they’re good for us, and since they’re so darned tasty?

The week after that post we used the seasoned black beans from the freezer for rice bowls and burritos. The last few spoons of beans went into a soup made from boiling bag broth, to add some additional heft (and nutrition) to the carrots, potatoes, onions and homegrown celery.

Last week I announced that I would cook a few cups of pinto beans. Most would go into the freezer for future chili. But some would go into a recipe that I couldn’t get out of my brain: pinto bean bread.

Once I saw that, I couldn’t un-see it. The same is true of things like ketchup cookies and Kool-Aid pickles. It isn’t just a good idea to try these things. It’s the law.

Pinto bean bread isn’t a new thing, but it was certainly new to me. This particular recipe came from a blog called A Farm Girl in the Making. The blogger, Ann Accetta-Scott, called it a “stick-to-your-bones and fill you up kinda recipe.”

She’s not wrong.

Read more

The birthday pear fiasco. (Free recipe inside!)

by

Every year my daughter sends me a box of Harry & David pears for my birthday. The sweetness and juiciness of this fruit defies description. I look forward to them every year because you just can’t get pears like this in Anchorage. This year’s delivery was a little different, because the pears were delivered…frozen.

Not because they sat all day on the temps-in-the-teens porch, either. The delivery guy put the box directly into my hands. But when I opened up the gift, I found a batch of pearsicles.

Somewhere along the way, the fruit had encountered too-low temperatures – and there’s plenty of those on the Last Frontier. That’s never happened before with a Harry & David’s delivery.

As any savvy consumer would do, I phoned the company. Listened to the apologies, accepted a new delivery date for a new box of fruit.

And as any good frugalist would do, I wondered if I could salvage the old box. So I sliced one open and took a tentative nibble: hard and not sweet at all. Not surprising, since pears are picked under-ripe and allowed to develop to their full potential when customers want them.

While putting the pear’s core into the boiling bag, I decided that the rest of the fruit would not follow. I invented a new dessert* instead.

Read more

Soup of the evening.

by

 

DF was an alchemist this morning. Pulling containers and bags of stuff from the fridge and freezer, he filled the crockpot with:

Two kinds of broth (chicken-vegetable and seasoned pinto bean)

The drippings from a chicken he’d cooked on the Weber

Leftover pork loin (bought deeply discounted, of course)

Chopped-up garlic scapes (from the 2022 garden)

Diced onions

A handful of red and yellow pepper chunks (from the produce section’s “ugly but still good” shelf and cut up to freeze)

Homegrown celery (frozen), carrots and potatoes

The slow cooker began to emit a marvelously savory aroma as the day wore on. A little after 5 p.m., DF sliced up some of his easy rustic bread and announced that dinner was served. Outside it was 13 degrees and snowy, but indoors it was all warmth, comfort, and food that was prepared and shared with love.

Read more

Extreme frugality: Deal eyes.

by

 

The first Tuesday of every month is a standing date for DF and me: “Senior Day,” when folks over the age of 55 get 10 percent off all Kroger brands. In keeping with our extreme frugality ethos, we cruised the entire store to look for special deals.

And boy, did we find one. The price was so startling that we did double and then triple takes: 1½-pound boxes of Kroger breakfast sausage links for 49 cents.

What made the deal extra-surprising is that the 1½-pound boxes of Kroger breakfast sausages right next to them cost $4.99 each. Examining the extreme-frugality version, we saw the reason for the startling differences in price: The cheaper sausage needed to be used or frozen that very day.

Fortunately, we now have two freezers: My niece replaced her 5-cubic-foot model with a much bigger deep-freeze, and gave us the old one. DF and one of his sons had picked it up just two days before.

So we bought a lot of sausage, including five boxes for my niece and her kids. This being Senior Day and the sausage being a Kroger product, we even got an additional discount. (Sort of. More on this below.)

The moral of the story: If you want to practice extreme frugality, you need to develop what I call “deal eyes.”

Read more

Anatomy of a frugal freezer.

by

Recently I did an article called “Anatomy of a frugal meal,” in which I detailed the various hacks that went into producing a last-minute meal that was both cheap and delicious. The reaction was so positive that I decided follow-up pieces might be in order.

The first idea came when I opened the freezer and realized how many things were engineered into that relatively small space. To be clear: This is the freezer atop our fridge, not the chest freezer. (But that one’s pretty full as well.)

As you’ll soon see, the fridge freezer has both good deals and odd stuff. Yet each item represents the best use of our food dollars, whether that’s growing it, buying it on sale or getting maximum use out of every bit of nutrition.

About that last: In a piece called “Extreme frugality: Use all the bits,” I pointed out that the price of eating hasn’t been this high for 10 years.

“Extreme frugality may become a necessity, if it isn’t already. So why not work to get as much out of every food item you buy? (As) the per-plate price of food continues to climb, remember that preventing food waste helps make your groceries more cost-effective.”

Our freezer is crammed with cost-effective (and sometimes free) items that keep costs down and mealtimes delightful. Have a peek inside.

Read more

How to get free stuff.

by

Once upon a time, it was easy to get free stuff. In the early days of Internet marketing, companies vied with one another to give away everything from candy bars to condoms.

Of course, this free stuff came at a cost: The manufacturers would spam you, and your info would likely be sold so that other people could spam you, too.

But for a little while our mailboxes turned into piñatas, spilling out stuff like protein bars, breakfast cereal, T-shirts, pet food, feminine hygiene products, fabric softener, cosmetics, snack foods, energy drinks and all sorts of over-the-counter medications. Those were the days.

Marketing has changed, and most of the folks who used to run freebie sites either sold their URLs or dropped outta the blogging business. But when asked to find out what’s still there, I found enough to write about for Money Talks News. “6 of the best websites for finding free stuff” notes that times have definitely changed:

“(Some) so-called ‘freebie’ sites are more about items that are free if you:

  • Use coupons and rebates.
  • Pay upfront and then get a loyalty program credit or an online rebate.
  • Jump through multiple hoops, such as creating an account, installing an app and linking your social media account.
  • Enter a drawing for a chance at getting the free item.
  • Take surveys and then use the points you earn to get “free” stuff.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with taking surveys; it’s one way of earning extra cash. Nothing wrong with rebates, either. But sometimes you just want to click it and claim it.”

I did come up with more than half a dozen legitimate ways to score gratis goods. (A couple of extras are tucked in as also-rans.) The article also includes pro tips and caveats. Have a look, and score some free stuff of your own.

A few other pieces I’ve done for Money Talks News lately:

Read more