Food Lion-UPDATED

 UPDATED! After the poor customer service I received at my local Food Lion this week, I will not be shopping there again.

WATCH THE AD CAREFULLY IF YOU GO. Some items on the page are not included in the "Big Deal" sale, and if you get a wrong item, they WILL NOT ADJUST YOUR PURCHASE. You will get a spiel about how they have to correct issues at corporate levels. This is complete BULL! The store manager would not even allow me to purchase an additional item to make my total items sufficient for the sale.

This week, Food Lion has some excellent sales going on! In addition to their Private Label brand Super Sale, they also have some great deals with their BIG DEAL sale. Purchase 10 items, save $5, and so on!

For the complete details, visit www.foodlion.com. For coupon matchups and tips to save money, go to www.southernsavers.com.

Happy shopping!

Budget Bread

I first made popovers when we lived in Hawaii. Being 18 years old, working for minimum wage, married to an E-2 in the Navy, money was t-i-g-h-t. I found this recipe one night, a few days before payday, and since it did not call for everything I was out of (biscuit mix, shortening, baking powder, cornmeal, etc.) I decided to try it.

DELICIOUS!!!!!!

This easy recipe is my go to quick fix for breadless nights, (oh, the horror) and I decided to share the recipe with you!

Popovers
1 cup flour
1/2 teas salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs

Mix all ingredients very well. Pour into generously greased muffin cups, filling 2/3 full. Bake at 425 about 30-40 minutes or until golden, toasty brown.

This always thrills kids when they bite into what they think is a traditional roll, and find it hollow and full of air!
If you are not serving these the minute they come out of the oven, you will need to cut a slit in the top of each popover to keep it from collapsing in on itself. (NOT attractive)

 

Popovers make for a happy hubby, which makes for a happy dinnertime at our house!

Cheap Grocery Store Finds

AFter the holiday season, our local stores usually mark down a ton of holiday merchandise. This includes stuff like Hershey Kisses and candy bars in Christmas colored foils, baking supplies like decorator sprinkles and cookie mixes, staples for many holiday recipes like canned pumpkin, french fried onion pieces, and Stove Top stuffing.

DO NOT FORGET TO USE YOUR COUPONS ON THESE ITEMS!

When the items are 50-75% off, and you use a good coupon (which your store may double), you are often being PAID to get the items! I personally do not care what color the foil on the candy is, it is still GOOD!

So take a little extra time and scout out the deals.  Our area Publix usually has the items like this on a turn around shelf display near the checkouts.Our Kroger stores pile things into buggies and put them up front in the health and beauty section or the natural foods section (which is very out of the way and takes some looking to find) but it is worth it to dig through and find some good sales. Who knows what you may be paid to take home!?!?!?

A Way to Get.....And To Give!

We have used Restaurants.com for years as a way to save money on going out to eat. Now, you can share this great way to save by giving FREE gift certificates to your friends! Check it out here:

http://www.feeditforward.restaurant.com

Just a reminder....

Be sure you check out the great blog www.southernsavers.com to get the most out of your money as you shop for your Thanksgiving dinner! This is my first stop when I make my grocery list. You can find weekly ads and specials for many different grocery stores, plus link to coupons for each sale item and many other goodies that will make your trip easier, faster, and much more economical! There is even a place at the bottom of each post to make a printable grocery list, with the coupon matchups! This is a huge help for me!

In today's coupon section of our newspaper, there is a coupon for $4 off a Butterball turkey when you buy 4 of any combination of Stove Top, Pillsbury cookie dough or pie crusts, and Heinz gravy. Check your stash for coupons for the cookies, stove top and pie crust and use these in conjunction with the $4 off the turkey to maximize your savings!

Happy shopping! Remember that you can have a great holiday feast on a little budget with some planning and wise shopping.

Restaurant.com

WOWIE WOW WOW!

You can buy gift certificates to your favorite restaurant for 90% off just by purchasing a gift certificate at www.restaurant.com! Check it out! We have used this site for over a year. It is the real deal, not a scam!

Magazine Savings

Today I am passing on a GREAT DEAL on magazines that I found on the back of a Little Debbie snack cake box.
Up to one year of your favorite magazines for just $5!!!!!
You can choose from Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Fitness, Family Circle and Parents magazines.
Offer expires Oct. 31,2010

Visit  www.bhg.com/littledebbie for all the details!

Coupons

The Savannah Morning News has a new section in it's Sunday paper. (Click here to view.) It is attached to the comics, and it is all about coupons and how to use them more effectively. There are some great tips found here, and although some of the ideas would TOTALLY not fit my way of doing things, they are helpful to many I am sure.

It annoys me though, that they are now offering multiple copies of the Sunday paper at a "reduced" rate. The idea if for people to be able to get more copies of the coupons. But with so many coupons readily available to print at home via www.coupons.com, www.smartsource.com, www.redplum.com, www.cellfire.com, etc, is it really worth the extra money every month? And what about the waste of the extra newspapers/ Are people recycling them? Five extra Sunday papers is a lot of waste!

What are your thoughts here? Do you get more than one paper? Do you use printable coupons?

Coupons in unexpected places

This week, our Sunday paper had three coupon inserts. I also found coupons in some unexpected places this week. Inside the USA Weekend insert, there are 3 coupons on the last page for Scott paper products. I purchased two packs of Scott Natural wipes last week, and found a coupon in the most interesting (and a bit annoying) place....tucked inside of the back of the package inside of a sealed little envelope that I had to cut along the sides of to retrieve the coupon. It was a good one though, 75 cents off of one pack of wipes. :)

Lastly, I have found that many companies are catching on to teh appeal and convenience of Facebook. You can go to www.facebook.com/nabiscocookies on the first Monday of every month to download a coupon for a FREE package of Nabisco cookies when you buy one package plus a gallon of milk. The applet will allow you to print two coupons per month. Since I shop twice a month, this gives a little treat at an affordable price! Last month, Publix had the Chips Ahoy BOGO, and I used my coupon, which gave me two packs of Nabisco cookies and a gallon of milk for under $5. This will be a great way to have a little something special to snack on when the kids are out of school this summer and ALWAYS hungry!

Ruth's Chris Steakhouse

Today I saw in the Savannah Morning News that beginning June 4, 2010 at 9:00am, you can purchase a $75 gift card to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for just $45. Quantities are limited, so sign on to www.savannahdeals.com to learn more! The certificate is being offered in celebration of Ruth's Chris' 45th aniversary.

A convert!

I have been playing the grocery game for a while now, and I enjoy it. I truly do. I strive to save at let 50% on my grocery shopping trips and majority of the time I do. I have on rare occasions saved closer to 75% but that is rather unusual.

When I say I enjoy this, I am not exaggerating. My favorite things to do are clip and organize coupons, make my list, match up the deals (with help of www.southernsavers.com) and head out to my stores. I go twice a month, when my husband gets paid.  I put a HUGE cooler across my backseat, gather up all of my reusable shopping bags, pour myself a big insulated glass and head out.  I make my route at Publix, Kroger and Save-A-Lot. I am usually done in about 3 hours, but sometimes I take longer because I just enjoy it so darn much. :)

Well, a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked for my help. She stated that while she loathed the idea and time consuming task of cutting coupons, she had to learn to manage her money better. I told her I would show her my tricks and help her as best I could. I introduced her to Southern Savers, and she was hooked.

Now I get texts from this converted non-couponer that read like this:

"I just got free body wash at WalMart! $3.99 body wash plus $4 coupon made it free! I am excited!"
or
"I got a deal today at CVS that I can't wait to tell you about!"
or my personal favorite
"You were right! It's addictive! I'm hooked!"

The moral of this story is, even if you think couponing and saving money isn't for you, just give it a try. You might be surprised. :)

New Website

  

Well, it isn't exactly a new website but it is new to me. It is called Southern Savers, and it is simply the greatest website EVER if you want to save money on your grocery bill. Darling Jenny lists ads and sales from several stores, and carefully matches each sale item with coupons. It is so easy to save money this way!

There are also Southern Savers Seminars (say that 3 times fast!) offered almost every weekend. You can take the seminar for just $10 and learn everything there is to know about coupons and how to use them effectively. You can register on the website. I am attending one in November and I am so excited!

Check it out and get ready to save some money!

Bennigans

Last night my husband and I were driving around town looking for something to eat. It was the usual "What do you want?" followed by "I don't care, what do you want?" thing. I don't know about most of you, but when I say I don't care I truly don't. Just pick somewhere, and I will find something on the menu I like. Anyway, all of the usual places were PACKED, it was 7:00 on a Saturday for crying out loud. So when we drove past Bennigans, it did not look crowded at all so we flipped a (legal) u-ie and went in. We have eaten at Bennigans a few times before, and I knew they had yummy potato soup so I was pleased to go in.

Well they have changed their entire menu. The waiter handed us a laminated addition to the menu, which showed a special thing they have created called 3 for $20. The way this works is that you can choose one appetizer, two entrees and two desserts from the selected menu items for a total of $20.

My beloved and I split yummy Irish fries, which were french fries covered with cheese, bacon, green onions and sour cream. Then he got the Guinness glazed chicken sandwich, which was so tall the frill pick they cook inserted to hold the monster sandwich together was not visible. It came with more fries. I had the grilled chicken platter which came with two thick and juicy chicken breasts, rice pilaf and steamed broccoli. We finished up with a piece of apple spice cake for me and a chocolate brownie wedge for him. It was delicious, and there was so much food we needed to-go boxes for the leftovers!

I read sometime back that many of the Bennigans closed, and I am super glad that ours did not. We will be back, and this 3 for $20 deal was so great that I had to share it with you!

So go to Bennigans and eat for a reasonable price and enjoy!

Blogging update

This blog may be changing A LOT in the very near future.....please keep up at my other blog here for updates!

Savings at Food Lion

Saturday afternoon my husband and I ran into a nearby Food Lion store. It is not the store closest to us, but one a few miles away. I strolled into the meat market to look for some lunch meat, and I saw little pink stickers on a lot of the fresh meat in the cases, denoting that they had been marked down. I had talked with the meat market manager in the past and knew that their usual meat markdown days were Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, so I was not expecting to score any big deals. Closer looks revealed that there were some SUPER deals to be had, especially on pork! I got several packs or pork chops that had originally been marked at over $9 a pack, for less that $3! Packs of ground pork were marked down from $3.99 to a mere 75 cents. I grabbed several packages of the pork chops, but avoided the ground pork because it didn't look all that great. I noticed a sign sticking up out of the case that had an advertisement on it for pork, something along the lines of eating pork or grilling pork or pork is the other white meat or something, but I didn't really read the sign because my eye settled on something else.....there were coupons attached to the sign! That's right, each coupon was for $1 off of any package of fresh pork. I read carefully to make sure it would apply to the packages I had selected, and sure enough, it did! I scampered happily to the register and brought home my savings in a bag!

Of course, part of what I saved went towards the Heath candy bars that were buy one get one free by the register...I have been craving Heath bars for some reason lately!

JC Penney

I went to JC Penney yesterday and I was thrilled to find that they were having a HUGE 75% off sale in all departments! They had jeans for my daughter in the girls plus section (which are very hard to find!) for less than $10 a pair and shirts in plus sizes for $5!!!!! It was a great time to go!

Food Lion Mac and Cheese

For those of you in the Savannah area, I just learned that the Food Lion in Pooler has it's store brand macaroni and cheese dated Sept 2010 on sale for 10 cents a box. My hubby just called to tell me he picked up 30 boxes!

FREEBIES!

My good friend Heather from Kalamazoo sent me a link to this blog, PACKED with freebies and discounts! Check it out and get your freebies coming!

Click here for free stuff!

50 free photo prints PLUS free shipping!

Thanks to the Money Wise Mom blog, I heard about an offer from Snapfish to get 50 free prints with free shipping. I just signed up with Snapfish again, with a different email than I had used with them before, and it worked great! I have used Snapfish a few times and the quality is great and I get my prints in about 3-4 days.
Try it! Click the link here and upload your pics. It's free...what have you got to lose?????

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